White House urges "creative destruction" of conventional social problem solutions 1/29/10

Sonal Shah, head of the White House's Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, was in Los Angeles this week at a conference held by the University of Southern California's Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy and urged foundations to take greater risks, saying one of the lessons she learned in her first year is that the federal government is not easily able to finance experiments with new efforts to treat social problems. She said we need some "creative destruction" to figure out what ideas were worth government investment - whether it be to reduce child mortality, improve education, or solve other social problems. She also said that much of her work has been hobbled by a lack of detailed data and statistics about nonprofit groups and how public policies affect them and the people they serve. Without reliable data, she says, it is often hard for her and her colleagues to get support for ideas that might help nonprofit groups. Read more...