The larger donors understand the build/buy, and need to. I am hopeful that donations of all types pick up this year and that many of the venerable charities survive.
Bobby Vassallo

My view is they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. That’s why the tagline for Tactical Philanthropy Advisors is “innovative, effective and joyful philanthropy.”

The organizations that won are certainly exceptional. As one of the expert reviewers, I’m only human and I was disappointed that the organization I thought had the most transformational model didn’t win. However, I know there will be other competitions where their light will shine the brightest.

It seems that people sometimes overlook that SIF since its inception has been about growing high performing organizations and this purpose is spelled out in the authorizing legislation; the administrative rules and funding approach necessarily follow in the same vein. The word “innovation” in the title of the fund leads people, I think, to assess SIF’s actions according to their own view of what’s “innovative.” If one’s definition is along the lines of “never been done before / unique / wacky / high risk / totally new” then it’s easy to be disappointed. But the legislation really doesn’t contemplate that as the funding orientation.

My own view is that the innovation to focus on (in addition to the deployment of build capital by government) is the potential for SIF to deliver more value for public dollars than traditional government funding processes. This will be the case if the SIF’s sub-grantees ultimately “out-perform” peer organizations focused on similar issues that are significantly funded through government contracts. If this happens, and if government dollars in traditional channels are then redirected to these higher value efforts, SIF will be a successful innovation.

Intermediaries actually cost the groups. For example, intermediaries based on legacy legislation funding got education for CNCS VISTA while they serve, but all other CNCS aren’t allowed. This may be the same with the second job.

50 million is a lot, bu they wanted more like the education 650,000,000. It’s earmarks for pals.

Will Edna McConnell Clark put more money behind Nurse Family Partnership or will they help seed other community based approaches to helping low income moms that are already in practice but have not had the benefit of any long term analysis of their impact? Maybe a program like Healthy Families (funded by NYS) is as effective, but more efficient than NFP?

I cannot wait to see what happens next.

Rachael