Social enterprise summit takes policy turn
More than 350 people from social enterprises across the United States and beyond came to the tenth Summit of the Social Enterprise Alliance, held in New Orleans earlier this month. This year’s Summit featured a new policy track that explored federal, state, and local policy options. Organized by Public Innovators, a project of the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Root Cause, the policy track aimed to encourage exploration of ways government can work with the p expand the power and impact of social enterprise. In particular, four areas that were featured at the conference was the creation of a state Office of Social Entrepreneurship in Louisiana, the expansion of the Corporation for National and Community Service through the Serve America Act (signed into law by President Obama last week), the formation of a White House Office of Social Innovation, and the growing number of state efforts to create a new corporate category, the L3C or Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, a legal entity in which the company through its articles of incorporation may earn profits, but subject to meeting its charitable mission constraint, as stated in its articles of incorporation. A year ago, as profiled in this blog, Vermont became the first state in the nation to pass such legislation. Other states have now followed suit, including Michigan, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. The nonprofit Americans for Community Development maintains a listing of these and other state legislative efforts here.
Some further details about the above:
State of Louisiana, Office of Social Entrepreneurship: Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu addressed the conference. Andrew Wolk blogs briefly about the speech here. A more extensive review of Landrieu’s remarks is offered by Nicole Wallace in her Chronicle of Philanthropy blog. At the conference, Landrieu noted that the primary reason for the creation of the Office was necessity—specifically the need, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to find “a new way of doing things, because the old ways didn’t work.”
Serve America Act, a summary of provisions can be found here. Among the highlights; A provision to increase the size of AmeriCorps from 75,000 positions annually to 250,000 by 2017 and the formation of a Social Innovation Fund—basically a federal source of nonprofit capital — which can leverage federal dollars to support community wealth building initiatives through a combination of scaling up of existing successful efforts or by providing seed funding for new initiatives. Jim Fructerman of the social enterprise Benetech about the Social Innovation Fund here.
Low-Profit Limited Liability (L3C) companies: As noted above, legislation to permit the formation of low-profit limited liability companies now exists in five states—up from zero just one year ago. The Crow Indian nation has also passed L3C legislation. Additionally, efforts to extend the legislation in other states are under way in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee. Nicole Wallace of the Chronicle of Philanthropy covers some of the conference highlights here.
White House Office of Social Innovation: The best explanation of the new White House Office of Social Innovation is provided by Nicole Wallace of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. As Wallace details here, the three main purposes of the Office of Social Innovation are:
a) To promote the sharing of best practices.
b) To provide money to innovative nonprofit projects in areas such as math and science education and to assist states suffering from economic dislocation like Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.
c) To promote national service and volunteerism.
Additional conference highlights include:
• An overview of the growth of the social enterprise movement, with a panel consisting of Jed Emerson (Nicole Wallace writes about Emerson’s comments here), Charles King of Housing Works, and Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez of Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin Counties.
• A discussion of a practitioners’ guide to social enterprise, Mission, Inc., by the books’ two coauthors — Kevin Lynch of the Minneapolis-based Rebuild Resources and Julius Wells of Yonkers, NY-based Greyston Bakery. (See Nicole Wallace’s report here).
• A discussion of ways to break down barriers between social enterprise and other related sectors, with a plenary panel consisting of Janie Barrera, CEO of Acción Texas, a micro-enterprise loan fund and community development financial institution; Lynn Lohr of TransFair USA, a fair trade certification organization; and Deb Levine of Internet Sexuality Information Service, a public health group.
Posted by Steve Dubb on 04/28/2009 at 10:04 AM
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