Philanthropists Kick In $50m to Social Innovation Fund

First Lady Michelle Obama today announced that philanthropic foundations and individuals -- including Silicon Valley VC John Doerr and the family foundations led by social entrepreneurs Pierre Omidyar, Eli Broad and Jeff Skoll, among others -- have kicked in a combined $50 million in matching dollars to the national Social Innovation Fund, to help fund and spur public/private social innovation. Obama said the amount matches the amount of SIF grant dollars the government has already committed to the program.

"Our nation's leading philanthropists have done what we hoped they would do: invest $50m to match the amount of Social Innovation Fund grants that we'll be giving out over the next two years," Obama said in a news conference. "By working together, we can make the greatest difference with every dollar we invest, helping to scale what grassroots projects work, from local projects to national programs."

Additionally, Obama announced that the heads of more than 130 philanthropic foundations, led by the Council of Foundations, have signed a letter -- released today -- that endorses the Social Innovation Fund and signals the philanthropic grantmaking community's support for the administration's initiatives to invest in innovative nonprofit programs across the country.

"Together, this collaboration provides a strong start for the new Social Innovation Fund and will help create a pipeline to sustain this fund" long after the end of the Obama Administration, Obama said. "This is exciting stuff. It hasn't happened before, and it's a great beginning -- just where we need to be."

Meanwhile, Obama said, the White House has been reviewing nearly 70 applications for SIF grant dollars. She said the applications under review involve collaboration among 260 groups in 25 states. She said the first round of SIF grant winners --projects "that will make the biggest difference and make the biggest return," she said -- will be selected soon and announced in July.

"The challenges we face today are bigger and more complex than ever and solving them will require all of us to contribute our ideas and pool our resources like never before -- one investment, one project, and one pioneering community at a time," Obama said. "Addressing the greatest challenges of our time cannot depend solely on what happens in Washington, and thank God it cannot. If we're going to go beyond the status quo, if we are going to transform lives and lift up communities, we will need good ideas and successful programs in every single corner of this country."

An example of grassroots innovation already having measurable impact, Obama said, is the BELL Program in Boston, which grew out of an initiative taken 18 years ago by a group of black and latino students from Harvard Law School. " They were were troubled to discover that many students of color in local schools couldn't read or write or do math at their grade levels," Obama said, "so they started a tutoring program.  Every member of that first class of BELL Scholars went on to finish college, compared with 30 percent of their peers."

Obama said that programs like this one "were developed not here in Washington. Washington had nothing to do with it. These kinds of programs are being developed out in communities that understand the challenges at hand. And these programs are working. That's the beauty of it."