REDF is one of 11 organizations selected in 2010 as a recipient of the Social Innovation Fund Federal grant. Through an open and competitive process, including an online Request for Qualifications (RFQ) during fall 2010, REDF selected six organizations for our portfolio, announced February 2011.

For the second round RFQ, we are looking for strong organizations committed to building social enterprise to employ low-income California residents facing barriers to employment. For additional information such as eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, selection process, and documents required to complete the application, please visit our website.

Please help REDF spread the word by forwarding this email to your networks, sharing the news about REDF’s RFQ on Facebook and Twitter, and telling any interested organizations to visit:

www.redf.org/rfq

Last year’s Fall RFQ resulted in the selection of the six outstanding organizations that are now part of REDF’s portfolio.  We anticipate adding one to three more groups by the end of 2011!

For details on the 2011 RFQ visit www.redf.org/rfq.

Spirits at REDF were high as we marked the arrival of Spring with two ‘firsts’ that are described in this newsletter.

Several dozen representatives of REDF’s new portfolio came to San Francisco for their inaugural gathering, where they heard from Paul Carttar, Director of the federal Social Innovation Fund.  He was in town to talk about how REDF’s portfolio is part of a national effort to build evidence of what works when communities deal with tough social problems like chronic unemployment, and how to widely replicate the most promising solutions.

REDF is already starting that replication effort, click here to read more about Samra Haider who is leading our expansion to Los Angeles.

Click here to read the full newsletter

A few takeaways:

1. The most accomplished social entrepreneurs remain frustrated about the slow pace of change, and challenged by the scale required to have a real impact on big problems. While ‘disruptive innovations’ can demonstrate a new way to do business, to affect the majority of people will require us to engage government more directly and significantly increase private investment.
2. We are not remotely assertive enough about making the case for increased individual and corporate philanthropy directed to addressing poverty and conditions related to poverty.
3. When the success of our programs depends on superior execution (e.g. outstanding, uniquely qualified staff; especially strong nonprofit organizations, etc.) those programs will not achieve real impact at scale – because that kind of superior execution cannot be routinely achieved.  Aim for approaches where success can be achieved via ‘average’ implementation.

Perhaps as a counterpoint to our frustration about the slow pace of change — in their book “Switch”, the Heath brothers argued that while big long term goals can be inspiring, it’s the concrete, instrumental steps that make us feel that rush of accomplishment.

Dr. Atul Gawande has also offered an argument for the benefits of incremental change – while also suggesting a blueprint for the kind of ‘average’ replication that may be required.  He describes successful efforts decades ago in the US to transform agricultural production which was driving food prices to unaffordable levels, and putting a damper on economic growth.  Sounds like the health care debate.

Dr. Gawande noted that change happened not prescriptively, but a little bit at a time, as individual farmers in different locales were persuaded and supported to take a chance on new techniques that had positive results, impressing their neighbors to copy those practices.  As the government made selective investments in information and practical analysis, they communicated what they learned widely.  Sounds something like the Social Innovation Fund.

Showdowns over federal and state budgets heat up, and brave citizens protest repression around the world challenging traditional thinking and dogma.  Incremental change can be productive, and demonstrating new ways to do things on a relatively small scale can create momentum and change some peoples’ lives, but until we engage larger systems in government and business we are unlikely to make sweeping, enduring change.  And until and unless as citizens and consumers are willing to challenge orthodoxy, we are not going to get government and business leaders to change direction.

I hear frequent frustration – not just from those who oppose ‘big government’ but from those who are in the social sector — about how the requirements tied to government funds and the incentives they provide make it hard to do the things we know need to be done.  I heard from a member of Congress that when we advocate for funding of specific programs, we must step up to tell them what funding can be reduced.

I noticed a new study from the Harvard School of Education challenging the notion that all we need to do as a country is set young people on a path to a four year college degree in order to engage them in the workforce.  I also saw an article from William Schambraa challenging the value of social sector measurement of results – something we at REDF strongly value.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew”

- Abraham Lincoln

Today we make public the names of six of the organizations that will join our portfolio.  REDF will work with these groups and others selected later this year to expand their businesses so that at least 2,500 more Californians starting working by 2015. REDF’s new portfolio includes two groups in the SF Bay Area, two groups in Los Angeles, and two groups that will operate in multiple California geographies. Together they will employ people who had sky-high rates of unemployment before the current economic downturn – people who need these jobs urgently. We’ll be ramping up businesses that deliver property management services in affordable and supportive housing; enterprises that provide fresh, local produce and recycling; and all kinds of other valued services to our communities.

As we work with the new portfolio to create jobs as pathways into the workforce, we will also pursue our second objective to reach an even larger scale so that every community in the US understands how to accomplish this cost-effectively and with real impact.

With REDF’s portfolio, alumni portfolio, and other social enterprise leaders around the country, we intend to develop even stronger evidence and business models, and promote and expand the road-tested approach that combines sustainable businesses with evidence-based employee supports.

Most employers are reluctant to hire people caught up in the criminal justice system, or those facing homelessness, or struggling with addiction or mental illness.   And many of them are without the work experience to compete; although we know from 15 years of experience that they want to work and are able to.  Once they get some experience, employers are more likely to hire them.  They just need a chance.

With so many out of work, why create jobs for these particular people?

First and foremost, these are not strangers, but our uncles, aunts, cousins and neighbors.  They are young people who grew up in the neighborhood. They are veterans who came home traumatized, and became homeless or entered the criminal justice system.  They are among the six percent of our family members and friends with a serious mental illness. We shop at the same stores, attend church or temple together, and have sent our kids to school with them.

And it’s not only that they are part of our community.  If we do not do something now that reduces their incredibly high rates of unemployment, instead of working and contributing to our communities and our democracy, they will burden the economy and taxpayers with the myriad costs that accompany long-term unemployment.  Costs that too many Americans are now learning about first-hand.

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a federal program supported by the President and the Congress is fueling this effort with seed funding, fully matched by REDF and our private donors.  The point is to make good on a promise that Americans are rightfully skeptical about – that we can make progress on the critical issues of our time by maximizing private support, using the efficiencies of business methods, and delivering complementary support services that are proven to work.  This is our chance.  We’re at the starting gate.  Check out the competitors on the field, and what you can do to help us reach the finish line!

The other week, during the State of the Union speech, the President focused on how to create jobs in the US context, suggesting direct investments in business development, research and infrastructure.  This was followed with a White House event to announce “StartUp America” – an effort led by Steve Case and the Kauffman Foundation to spur innovation and business creation.  Fortune’s business blogger Dan Primack in a January 31 post responded with what he called “cynical optimism”.  But when I heard that the Social Enterprise Alliance (SEA) had been invited to attend, and had a chance to suggest that these investments also be made in social enterprises that create jobs for the most disadvantaged – I tilted from cynic to optimist.

While there’s plenty of debate about how much government can do to stimulate job creation, a  recent paper from the Harvard Business School and Pacific Community Ventures goes so far as to state that, “There is no market from which government is completely absent…”.  Think  government investments that created the worldwide web, and the nation’s web of highways for just two examples.

I heard an earful about these issues myself this last week traveling to Los Angeles and Sacramento where I met with business, government, and nonprofits about REDF’s effort  to create jobs for young people not in school or at work, and people exiting homelessness or incarceration; and a model that can be sustained and scale.   It’s the government’s Social Innovation Fund, along with private philanthropy that support our work – and it’s this kind of combination that does seem to work best.

In the Southland I was greeted warmly by the Board of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation – leaders of both business and government  when I had the chance to let them know about REDF’s plans to expand in California.  I met with self-described conservatives who run businesses and advocate for them who fully embraced our ideas about helping nonprofits create jobs for people otherwise shut out of the workforce – and eagerly sought to help.  I met people in government who wanted to connect the dots between community colleges and the people REDF’s enterprises employ; and between procurement and job creation.

My take after working in all 3 sectors over the past 3 decades is that practical people in business and government who care about their communities knows that it takes all sectors to create value for our families, neighbors, and colleagues.

It’s disappointing when public agencies mostly talk about how much they’re spending rather than about results; or offer little analysis of expenditures as compared to benefits.  It’s disappointing when government spends too little time talking to business and philanthropy to find out how to use public investment and regulation to create the most public good.

And it is disappointing that businesses often ignore the social conditions they may exacerbate.  Too often neither their balance sheets nor their lobbying efforts take into account the costs that communities may bear for the decisions they make.  Their private philanthropy may help the community, but they might be able to do more through their core business if motivated to do so.

So when we have huge budget debates, there is little reliable data or information to go on in figuring out what’s worth cutting and what’s not; what tax incentives or regulations should be preserved and which ones eliminated.

Some businesses and some government agencies are starting to show signs of progress.  The whole point of the Social Innovation Fund is to create more evidence about what works, and facilitate replication and scale when warranted..

As the public continues to debate the roles of business and government in job creation, REDF will work with SEA and others to demonstrate that nonprofits also play a vital role in innovation and job creation, while generating data on costs and results that informs, and we hope influences business and government action.

Stay tuned right here – February 15 we’ll announce our new portfolio and the partnerships they have forged between business and government to create jobs!

Today we also publicly initiate the first phase of our federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant.  The posting of our inaugural Request for Qualifications (RFQ) starts an open, competitive process for nonprofits and their partners to apply to become part of REDF’s portfolio and a SIF subgrantee.

It is with great pleasure that REDF announces the launch of our RFQ.  Completed applications must be submitted by 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST) on October 15, 2010, although submissions prior to the deadline are encouraged and accepted.

The administering federal agency for the SIF notes that the SIF is “a new way of doing business for the federal government that stands to yield greater impact on urgent national challenges” and that the SIF, “sets a higher standard for evidence, empowers communities to identify and drive solutions, and creates an incentive for grant making organizations to more effectively target funding to solutions that generate real impact.”

In this spirit, REDF developed the RFQ.  For more details about eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, selection process, and documents required to complete the application, please download and review this PDF document.

It is unacceptable that so many Californians have had little or no access to the workforce,  especially when we understand the high price they, their families, and the members of our whole community pay when people who can and want to work cannot find a way to do so.  It is even more unacceptable when we know how to create pathways for them to succeed.  It’s time to change that picture.

Please join us by helping REDF spread the word by forwarding this post to your networks, sharing about REDF’s RFQ on Facebook and Twitter, and telling any interested organizations to visit: www.redf.org/rfq.

I thought about how the economy sputters along, and no one seems to know where the ‘next big thing’ is coming from.  The newspapers today told us that we can’t count on the technology sector for big job growth, and President Obama’s Labor Day suggestion of a new infrastructure ‘bank’ and $50 billion of funding to create jobs repairing roads and bridges hardly registered for most people who are either pedaling as fast as they can to hang on to the jobs they have, or holding their breath as they try to make it through yet another week of unemployment.

Meanwhile, John Tammy of Forbes tells us,

“But while it’s exciting to contemplate the giving nature of Gates and Buffett, if their true desire is to help their fellow man, they should hoard every penny of their significant wealth…

Some will no doubt benefit in the near term, but the removal of limited capital from the productive parts of the economy will ultimately reduce our standard of living, drive up unemployment and make individuals more — as opposed to less — needful of charity”.

Interesting.

Sean Stannard-Stockton’s Tactical Philanthropy blog offered up some choice comments on Tammy’s suggestion, noting that the nonprofit sector is a huge part of our economy, with millions of jobs and active investments in the building blocks of our economy – education, scientific experimentation, etc.

From REDF’s perspective, the irony is perhaps even more pronounced.  We are using a mix of philanthropy and government funding (through the Social Innovation Fund) to invest in the creation of businesses that in turn provide jobs to people who would otherwise be economically unproductive, and would require public subsidies to meet basic needs, while cycling through costly systems such as prisons and homeless shelters.

Quite the reverse of Tammy’s notion, the philanthropy flowing into these ‘social enterprises’ provides capital that drives down unemployment, and makes people less — as opposed to more — needful of charity.

We invite Mr. Tammy to come visit organizations like New Door Ventures, Community Housing Partnership, and Buckelew Programs.  See what philanthropic capital can do when deployed productively.  There’s more than one way to stimulate the economy.  And given the paucity of solutions flowing from for profit private sector businesses, or our nation’s capital for that matter, maybe it’s time to look for ‘the next big thing’ elsewhere.

What do you think?  Where is the job growth of the future going to come from?  How can it include more people who have traditionally been excluded from the workforce, while also employing millions of people who were working, but now have been frozen out of an economy that is anemic when it comes to job creation?  What is the ‘next big thing’ to stimulate job growth?

Over the next five years, we will help grow nonprofit social enterprises, and also to innovate in an area where success has been elusive — helping people to retain jobs and advance up the ladder who do start working after a period of chronic disconnection and unemployment.

While we know that social enterprise brings people into the workforce successfully, we do not have a rigorously proven model that has lengthened the duration of employment for people who initially face multiple barriers to work.   We do know from research that when people are stably employed for a year or so, most of the important elements of their lives change for the better – income, health, housing, and reductions in recidivism to prison.

Going forward, we will dedicate some of REDF’s resources to advancing those practices that are ‘bright spots’ with demonstrated success in job placement, job retention and upward mobility for social enterprise employees.  We’ll build into our “model” what we learn from the evidence.

And while we institute these new approaches, we also recognize that some people will, over the long haul, work at front line jobs that deliver essential services benefitting us as individuals, and improving our communities, but jobs that are not high up the career ladder or income scale.

Many people who are concerned about workforce development tend to focus on advancement, education and training, rather than helping people to simply get any job.  This is motivated by an interest in ensuring that people can support themselves with adequate salaries and realize their full potential to contribute.  We wholeheartedly agree, and everything REDF and our portfolio companies do aims to help people achieve their highest aspirations for education and work!

But sometimes the drumbeat has an undercurrent of disrespect for people in certain jobs.  Like janitors for example.  This has always bothered me, perhaps because of some personal history.  While my life has been privileged, my father’s father was a janitor on New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1900’s as I was told repeatedly.   He was an educated, intelligent person, as many people are who do that work.   Maybe that’s one reason why I always resonated with the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. who manages to support both sides of the equation at once…

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

This hasn’t always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don’t drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you’re forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.  Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

While REDF aims to help people set their sights as high as possible, we also might consider how and whether all of us express respect for people that do work on the front lines – and often do it with polish and dignity.  Better pay, after all, is often connected to how we value particular kinds of work.

Here is another story you might want to check out if you resonated with that thought.

Meanwhile, front and center on our minds is how we can help to end joblessness among people with major barriers, while being bombarded by articles like those about the self-named “99’ers”. These are the 1 million or so Americans who will have exhausted 99 weeks of unemployment benefits by the end of 2010, and have few ‘barriers to work’ other than not having a job!

Why does REDF believe it’s so critical to create jobs for people with major barriers, when so many other people don’t have work?

An answer we’ve consistently offered over the years is that long-term unemployment clearly costs society, communities, families, and taxpayers as people depend on public benefits or experience cycles of homelessness or even incarceration when they have no way to earn a living.

But in the context of today’s sky high unemployment rates, our commitment to this effort has, perhaps paradoxically, gotten even stronger as we understand in our bones the impact of long-term unemployment. This was brought to life for me at the office last week. A candidate for a REDF job came to interview, and said, “This interview will be short, because I was offered two jobs today.”

She went on to tell us that she had still wanted to come in and meet us because she felt so strongly about our mission, especially after having experienced a significant period of unemployment herself. The painful effects of losing the social network, the feeling of pride and accomplishment and sense of purpose were fresh in her mind. And she told us that what was hardest to hold on to was a sense of hope. She had recently heard someone say that more than any other characteristic, what distinguished those who eventually got a job was maintaining hope.

Click the photo to read about how a job changed Jamall's life

When I first arrived at REDF three and a half years ago, I liked our tag line, “Investing in employment and hope”, but it’s taken on a whole new meaning through this recession. All people need the chance to work. REDF is about making sure some of those with the least opportunity have that chance.

One thing we know for sure is that government is not bailing us out of this mess anytime soon. Private citizens and the private sector have to step up. And with a hole blown in our economic resources, we have to make sure that public and private dollars are invested in initiatives that are not just cost effective, but really impact peoples’ lives.

And while the science of measuring social sector results is imperfect, REDF will do all we can to advance the SIF focus on improving what we do based on what we learn, and scaling the practices that have demonstrated real evidence of impact. Two articles that illuminate the ‘social measurement’ topic in all its thorny glory – worth reading: the New Yorker profile of Esther Duflo of MIT’s Poverty Lab describing the benefits of and controversies surrounding her random assignment studies of social programs ; and the piece by Geoff Mulgan director of the Young Foundation in Stanford Social Innovation Review arguing for sharper common frameworks among funders. There’s an insightful comment on that piece by Sara Olsen posted on that article.

Even if it’s not always what practitioners, policymakers and philanthropists are interested in, we are only going to be able to deliver results on the ground and get the political process and donors to invest in change ‘at scale’ when we are ready to offer hard facts and hard truths about what does and doesn’t work.