Few buzzwords ring truer in the ears of people of our current culture than phrases such as “social innovation,” “social entrepreneurship” and “nonprofit startup.”Being involved in organizations that target the social issues you are enthusiastic about demonstrates you care about these issues. But starting your own initiative to aid one, or many, of these social issues? Now that displays true commitment to the cause! It’s this type of start-up initiative that is lauded and rewarded by today’sculture.
Consider the example of the university application process. Admission counselors, teachers and the applications themselves make it clear that the type of leadership positions most often rewarded in the application process are ones showcasing initiative. This type of initiative is, of course, most embodied by applicants who create their own social initiative in their community. They are the applicants who started the afterschool tutoring program at their town’s middle school or created their own anti-bullying website.
Unfortunately, because so many of these applicants have been incentivized to pursue this specific type of leadership, they tend to view the social issues they care about in a one-dimensional manner. Many applicants fail to realize that often established and more effective groups are already working toward change in many of the same social areas. The college application process is one example among many of how today’s society has perpetuated the wrong incentives for social change.
This trend has left a great deal of society unfamiliar with the prospect of more good being done through established groups as opposed to something someone could initiate on their own.
To examine the costs of this societal misunderstanding, consider the number of new nonprofits founded in recent years. According to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research group, the nonprofit sector in the United States has grown 25 percent since 2001, from 1.26 million organizations to nearly 1.6 million in 2011. The true number of nonprofits is even larger than this because 1.6 million doesn’t include organizations with gross revenue of less than $25,000. Also, 948,769 public charities reported over $1.59 trillion in revenue according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics in 2011. The U.S. now spends more money than it ever has before on charitable organizations.
Despite the influx of social initiatives and their spending, the U.S. is struggling more than ever in many social sectors. The national poverty center reports that in 2010, 15.1 percent of the population lived in poverty, which is the highest poverty rate since 1993. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with a 2012 New York Times article stating that state spending on prisons, when adjusted for inflation, has more than tripled in the past three decades. The federal prison population has grown by almost 40 percent since 2001, according to a 2013 self-review from the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, homelessness has continued to be a systemic problem, with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty stating that in a given year, roughly 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness. These are but a few of the many growing social issues plaguing this country.
As shown, the numbers are alarmingly high. According to the statistics on social giving and initiative in this country, it would appear that significant progress toward social change has been made. Yet systemic social issues such as poverty, high incarceration rates and homelessness continue to plague the U.S.
For each of these issues, there are often quite a number of established organizations that have been proven effective with working toward development. Instead of supporting these groups and scaling their researched solutions, a culture has formed where social start-ups are equated with real progress. Such is the result of the standards we have created where the personal recognition of initiative is often valued more than collaboration, scalability, and true effectiveness. Consider for a moment the amount of resources that startups divert annually from local, statewide and national groups who have a proven track record of impact.
By no means am I claiming all social start-ups should shut down. However, it is important to be realistic about the true effectiveness of many well-intentioned initiatives in society. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it adds social value or impact. Society needs to stop glorifying initiatives, and the social recognition that comes along with them, over actual change and impact. This starts by beginning to value our communities’ and country’s charitable organizations based on whether or not they make measurable, meaningful and sustainable impact.
