U.S. Social Innovation Fund Names a Director

Paul Carttar, a senior adviser to the vaunted Monitor Institute and an executive partner at New Profit, Inc. -- a nonprofit group that gives money to innovative social projects -- has been named to lead the nation's new $50 million Social Innovation Fund.

Carttar -- who in 1999 co-founded the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consultancy, and earlier worked as the chief operating officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation -- is a passionate advocate for stepped-up effectiveness and accountability by nonprofit groups. Writing an article called Zeroing in on Impact for the Stanford Social Innovation Review in the fall of 2004, Carttar said that "relatively few nonprofits, even the most successful, have strategies designed to measure the impact they're having" -- a situation he said was unacceptable in times of economic uncertainty. Nonprofits need to start measuring the impact they're having, he says.

Carttar, who attended last year's Skoll Global Forum for Social Entrepreneurs in Oxford, England, also is an aggressive advocate of cross-sector collaboration in the field of social innovation; he is quoted on this year's Skoll Web page as saying: "The social entrepreneurship community is now global in nature and it is important that one's connections and awareness reflect that." According to the press release issued by the Fund today announcing Carttar's appointment, "Carttar will work to create a partnership between communities, social entrepreneurs, and the [Fund]" and will "develop a model for other federal agencies to support social innovation."

In a brief interview today with The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Carttar, a former Bain & Co. consultant, said he kicked off his varied professional career in 1977 with positions in Washington, including as a budget analyst for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and as a research assistant to Arthur Burns, the fabled former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the 1980s.

Carttar's early work seems already to be influencing his new position. He said today the Social Innovation Fund only will support programs that can prove they have the potential to re-shape how the government and the nonprofit world can work together more effectively. He also hinted at the need for consolidation around limited resources in the sector, telling the Chronicle: "One of the most critical things that can make the nonprofit sector as effective as possible is increasingly channeling financial resources to nonprofits that have actually demonstrated that the work they do changes people's lives." In a recent interview with Nonprofit Quarterly writer Rick Cohen, Carttar said: "...we're trying to democratize the funding market so that small organizations that actually are demonstrating real results can get access to financial support without having to know people."

Carttar says he plans to share with other agencies what the Fund learns about the process of catalyzing social innovation. He says he will also encourage collaboration among the groups that get Fund grants to form "learning communities."

Carttar's appointment comes the day before the April 8 deadline for submitting applications for the $50 million in grants that the Fund will award this year. As the SIF ramps up, it is expected to generate nearly $200 million in public-private funds to support cross-sector collaborative projects to promote social problem-solving.

The Social Innovation Fund was established by the 2009 Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act to encourage innovative nonprofits working in low-income communities to address critical social challenges in the areas of economic opportunity, youth development and youth health.