Reflections on SOCAP 2009

September 10, 2009 – 12:01 pm

While it would have been in the category of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” a few years ago – there is now a White House Office of Social Innovation led by the savvy Sonal Shah, who recently moved to D.C. after working at Google right here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  The dictionary definition [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Turning purchasing into possibility for the formerly incarcerated

August 4, 2009 – 3:06 pm

Change is in the air, and we will need plenty of it to move the needle on poverty in the U.S. It has remained stuck at around 12-13 percent of the population for decades, officially reaching 37 million in 2007. At REDF, we are developing a new partnership that gets directly to the heart of [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Learning from Goodwill’s success

July 13, 2009 – 9:22 am

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 [...]

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A chain reaction

June 25, 2009 – 11:03 am

On the heels of President Obama’s launch of the United We Serve campaign – calling on all Americans to volunteer to rebuild our communities – media trucks and police crammed San Francisco’s Howard Street, blocks from REDF’s office, awaiting the late afternoon arrival of Michelle Obama and Maria Shriver.  The First Ladies, had spent the [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Comments (1)

Pricing the crisis: the true costs of unemployment

June 15, 2009 – 11:49 am

With unemployment in the double digits, and the California economy melting down, REDF has a lot more company joining us in our (obsessive) focus on connecting people to work. I recently had the chance to hear Harry Holzer hang the striking price tag of about $500 BILLION annually – almost 4% of GDP – on [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Opportunities in the midst of a changing economy

May 29, 2009 – 10:09 am

As the economy continues to stumble, federal spending ramps up, and California government melts down, the buzz in the air is about the respective roles and effectiveness of the public and private sectors in solving social problems. Some are concerned that we might take a step backwards from the current emphasis on private-public partnership – [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

How can the Social Innovation Fund best serve America?

May 14, 2009 – 4:06 pm

President Obama’s federal budget proposal includes $50 million for a new Social Innovation Fund. REDF has been part of the America Forward coalition, a national group that has been a central force in driving creation of the Fund. Kelly Ward of America Forward, in an interview with Change.org said that the Social Innovation Fund, “was [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Comments (6)

Government vis-à-vis philanthropic ‘take-out’ strategies

April 24, 2009 – 3:35 pm

By Carla I. Javits, REDF President Sean Stannard-Stockton’s recent blog post suggests government as the ‘take out’ for social innovations pioneered through philanthropic investment. This is a new way of looking at the relationship between philanthropy and government, which has been evolving and changing for decades. While it is intriguing to consider a rational system [...]

By Carla Javits | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Comments (5)

Philanthrocapitalism – finding the middle ground

April 7, 2009 – 10:18 am

By Carla I. Javits, REDF President I recently participated in a lunch plenary at the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) “Aligning for Impact” conference. My fellow speakers included Matthew Bishop, whose recent book “Philanthrocapitalism” was a largely positive review of business influence on philanthropy, Michael Edwards, who wrote a piece critical of “philanthrocapitalism”, and Gara [...]

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When the stimulus coffers run dry, social enterprise will keep on…

March 31, 2009 – 8:07 am

By Carla I. Javits, REDF President On my first day back from the new year’s holiday, with the barrage of bad news about unemployment over the holidays running through my head, I tuned in to an Urban Institute audio webcast called: “Help Unwanted: Mitigating the Recession’s Toll on the Workers Most at Risk.” Harry Holzer [...]

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