Top Trends 2009 #1: A Partner in the White House

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published December 31, 2008 @ 10:46PM PT

The trend most likely to shape social entrepreneurship and the social benefit sector as a whole is the fact that in 2009, after eight long years, we will have a partner in the White House.

Back in 2007, as this newcomer with the funny name and great speeches started to criss-cross the country sharing his vision of America, many wondered whether he was just another case of oratory and empty promises. Being from Chicago, I had the benefit of being close to many of the people that had mentored him along the way. Without fail, I always heard the same thing. The ideas, the vision, the passion for justice: this was Barack Obama as he always had been.

The Bush Administration was a travesty for many reasons. The desiccation of our respect for the rule of law and our base participation in torture stand will long stand witness to how low we truly sunk. In some ways, the root of this travesty was the hubris that gloried in our supposed power, and the caustic arrogance that held that a small group of men could know what was best for the world.  In the Bush White House, there was no room for the discussion and disagreement that are at the core of the democratic process. There was certainly not an effective way for citizens to have their voice reach the highest echelons of office and change our course.

One lesson we should take from the outgoing administration is to be wary of the notion that any one individual or group possesses a monopoly on the truth. We should reject the idea that any one perspective can or should, on its own and in the absence of debate, possess the vision for how to make the world a better place.

In many ways, I believe that social entrepreneurship, at its philosophical core, is a democratizing force for social change. Social entrepreneurship rejects the premise that any one legal structure or theory of change alone owns a monopoly on the ability to improve the world. Indeed, the entrepreneurial approach to social change allows us to focus our allegiance primarily on impact. When one approach to fixing education, or health, or poverty comes up short, we innovate and iterate. Period.

We need an entrepreneurial approach to government, because social entrepreneurship, charity, volunteerism, and even responsible business cannot solve our problems alone. The challenges that we face are of a magnitude that we require all hands on deck, with a government that ready to teach or learn and lead or support as necessary.

The work being done by entrepreneurs across all sectors is inspiring, but sometimes, we will need a partner in government to achieve the scale our problems require. The KIPP schools have changed the destinies of thousands of students around the country, but there are millions more who languish in public education that does not serve them. To fix this, we will need a partner in government. Investors and firms are doing incredible work creating new, energy efficient products and services, but as long as there remain financial incentives to use more cheap and wasteful materials, climate change will plague our future. To fix this, we will need a partner in government.
The promise that I see in the Barack Obama administration is that from its very core, it seems to view itself as a partner with the American people in creating a better country and a better world. Perhaps this is unsurprising, considering that the school of community organizing in which the president elect incubated his ideas rejects the notion that we are nothing more than the sum of our problems, and instead insists that each of us is full of talent, ideas and other assets that we can leverage to shape our destiny.

My hope for 2009 is that a spirit of capacity and commitment reverberates from community meetings to local councils to corporate boardrooms to the highest halls of Washington.

To the social entrepreneurs and everyone else possessed of the will to make the world a better place, Happy New Year and as the man himself said so often on the campaign trail, “lets get to work!”