Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation

Social Innovation Fund

Solutions to America's challenges are being developed every day at the grass roots -- and government shouldn't be supplanting those efforts, it should be supporting those efforts.

- President Barack Obama, June 30, 2009

Background

Our nation is experiencing some of the greatest challenges in a generation, but it is also a time of great opportunity.   We all know that progress on our social challenges has been too slow and limited resources have been spent on approaches that do not work. President Obama is committed to supporting innovation that will help achieve faster, more lasting progress, as opposed to marginal or incremental progress on our social problems.  At the same time, we recognize that limited taxpayer dollars need to be directed at efforts that have evidence that they work and are ready to scale.

Progress

  • On April 22nd, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which created the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), housed at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a Federal agency.
  • Congress appropriated $50 million for FY2010. The SIF will identify promising, innovative solutions that have the potential to scale to meet the needs of other communities.
  • The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation and CNCS conducted broad outreach to develop the principles and structure of the SIF, with over 1,000 sharing feedback on the design even before Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) was drafted.  CNCS received over 200 comments on the draft NOFA.
  • On February 18th, 2010 CNCS released the NOFA to launch the first SIF grant competition. Applications were accepted through April 8th, 2010. Final grant awards will be made in July 2010.

Guiding Principles

President Obama created the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) to drive resources toward both innovation and results. The SIF is run out of the CNCS, a federal agency. There are several key principles that underlie the design of the SIF:

  • Federal money will be leveraged 3:1 by money from foundations and philanthropists;
  • The focus of the SIF will be on “promising”, innovative nonprofits to build their evidence base and capacity to grow.  Given this is an investment of taxpayer dollars, the SIF does not focus on early stage innovations that lack any evidence of impact;
  • SIF Funds go to “intermediary” organizations that will source idea,  support development of proof points, and build the capacity of nonprofit organizations; and,
  • Investments will be in areas of critical need for our communities:  economic opportunity and poverty alleviation; education and youth development; and healthy futures for American families.

Further Information

For more information on SIF, please visit the SIF website at CNCS.