Last week, President Obama met at the White House with forward-thinking groups like the Harlem Children’s Zone, HopeLab and Genesys Works to highlight the White House’s new Office of Social Innovation. The President could have been referencing employment-focused social enterprise when he said today,
“You teach us that there’s no such thing as a lost cause if you’re willing to be creative, and challenge the conventional wisdom, and take some risks — if you’re willing to try, and fail, and then try again until you find something that works. And today, I want to recognize that pioneering spirit and thank you all for the contributions that you’re making to our communities….The bottom line is clear: 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. Instead of wasting taxpayer money on programs that are obsolete or ineffective, government should be seeking out creative, results-oriented programs like the ones here today and helping them replicate their efforts across America.”
A banner day for the America Forward campaign (REDF is a proud member) which championed the Social Innovation Office and is advocating that Congress appropriate $50 million included in the President’s budget to fund innovation around the country.
Fresh from speaking to several hundred Goodwill executives at their national gathering in Indianapolis, and sparked by the energy and focus of the White House gathering, I am intrigued by the potential to instigate transformative change by mobilizing and unifying ‘old school’ and updated versions of employment-focused social enterprise. The talented Goodwill leaders meeting in Indy run triple bottom line businesses (social, environmental, financial returns) throughout the US. Combined, they employ about 80,000 people, and throw off billions of dollars of revenue that covers about 90 percent of their costs for providing employment and other services to more than a million other people. While not all of those employed by Goodwill started with ‘high barriers,’ and Goodwill’s model is tightly focused on the bottom line, more Goodwills are trying to find new ways to help build the assets and skills of their employees and other people they serve so that they can meet their aspirations and advance in the workforce.
Goodwills are also among the largest providers of services to the federal government under the AbilityOne program (on a personal note: Ability One was started by my father and two of his colleagues – it’s also known as the Javits-Wagner-O’Day program). This extraordinary program facilitates the federal procurement of $1.5 billion of goods and services from organizations like Goodwill, creating jobs for more than 40,000 people with disabilities each year, and is now starting a new initiative to explore private sector procurement (a pilot called “NetGain”) in order to expand.
The stirrings of a social movement (employment-focused social enterprise – anybody for a better name?) about to be born.
