Send to Friend 
 Digg   Del.icio.us   Facebook 
 StumbleUpon   Reddit 

Obama - Social Enterprise and Iraq

posted on Tuesday, February 03, 2009 11:11 AM

This comes from an article by Patrick O'Heffernan published last year by the Skoll Foundation for social enterprise, on the subject of Obama and social enterprise, quoting Obama:

"The second thing I'll do is invest in ideas that can help us meet our common challenges, because more often than not the next great social innovation won't be generated by the government."

With these words, candidate Obama promised to create a Social Entrepreneurship Agency within the Corporation for National and Community Service. He proposed $3.5 billion a year for social investment, paid for by ending the war in Iraq and eliminating corporate tax loopholes.

The idea is still conceptual, but it was accompanied by words that indicate that President-elect Obama - a former community organizer - understands the importance of the NPO sector and the role of social entrepreneurs in the economy.

"The non-profit sector employs 1 in 12 Americans and 115 nonprofits are launched every day. Yet while the federal government invests $7 billion in research and development for the private sector, there is no similar effort to support non-profit innovation. Meanwhile, there are ideas across America - in our inner cities and small towns; from college graduates to folks making a career change - that could benefit millions of Americans if they're given the chance to grow".

To my knowledge, it is the first time any American President as uttered the words "social entrepreneur" much less promised an agency to invest in SE. Obama said that the new agency would help small NPO startups get federal grants.

Obama also wants to create a Social Investment Fund Network, saying that, " It's time to get the grass roots, the foundations, the private sector and the government at the table." The objective of the network appears to be combining private and government money together to underwrite innovative solutions to pressing social issues. The Network would locate areas of high need and high innovation and help steer investments to them.

Now it's back to me. And something which may be interesting in this context. It's an extract from a paper delivered by us, a UK based social enterprise to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in October 2006. This being the committee on which Barack Obama and Joe Biden would be found.

In the summary and conclusions:

"It is proposed that the United States of America be actively engaged in supporting this project, financially and any other way possible. Ukraine has clearly demonstrated common will for democracy. Ukraine has also unilaterally taken the first critical step to fulfill this program, thus clearly demonstrating initiative and commitment to participation required in the original Marshall Plan sixty years ago. The US side is presumably attempting to foster democracy in another country, which never expressed much interest and shows little real interest now. That of course is Iraq, where recent estimates indicate a cost of $1.5 billion per week.

That same amount of money, spread over five years instead of one week, would more than cover the investment cost of the initial components of this project, and allow a reserve fund for creating new projects as Ukraine’s intelligentsia invents them in the Center for Social Enterprise. It is proposed that Ukraine and the US provide equal portions of this amount. Ukraine is certainly able to provide that level of funding, given that projects are designed with the same fiscal discipline employed in the traditional business sector. That means they pay for themselves, one way or another.

Project funding should be placed as a social-benefit fund under oversight of an independent board of directors, particularly including representatives from grassroots level Ukraine citizens action groups, networks, and human rights leaders. "

It is of course the microeconomic 'Marshall Plan', to which I refer in earlier posts. Funded by profit for purpose business in the UK paying tax the the UK government, it hit an even bigger target than intended.

Comments

No comments