Successes and Criticism Mark White House Social Innovation Fund

Four years after its inception, President Obama’s Social Innovation Fund has steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and matching grants to nonprofits with promising new ideas for tackling social problems but remains “very much a work in progress,” according to NPR.

Launched in mid-2009, the fund—an arm of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service—has disbursed $138-million to almost 200 organizations working in areas like education, health care, and job training and secured $350-million more in private donations.

The NPR article recounts how one fund recipient, Washington nonprofit network youthCONNECT, has helped disadvantaged young people. But Paul Light, a New York University public-policy professor who served on a review panel for the fund, said that despite some individual successes, the initiative as a whole has yet to show much impact.