Bipartisan Social Impact Bond Bill Introduced in the House

http://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2014/06/26/bi-partisan-bill-would-allocate-300m-for-social-impact-bonds/

Motivating Corporations to Do Good???

Eduardo Porter provides a nice summary of the history of what we now call corporate social responsibility.  He chronicles the increasing power of shareholders and equity-compensated managers over the last 50 years and calls on government to make sure corporations are good citizens.

Unfortunately, government does not exist in a vacuum and has increasingly lost power and resources versus corporations.  Shareholders (but primarily the senior corporate managers who control them) have used their additional power and money to fight government, labor , communities and all of the other stakeholders in our society.  We are now seeing the fruits of this 50 year transition.  

http://nyti.ms/1qdiQ6H

Modest Expectations and Consistent Followthrough

This Upshot piece in today's NYT offers the hope that maybe we can focus on social programs that actually work as a good middle ground between the "all government is bad" ideology of the right and the "more money will solve all problems" from the left.

While this approach can attract bipartisan support, it also requires reasonable expectations and consistency over long periods of time - not typical characteristics of our political process.

http://nyti.ms/1rcQNUl

Cognitive Dissonance, Creativity and Social Progress

David Brooks' op-ed calls out the important work of B corporations in overcoming the contradiction of well-intentioned but ineffective charity and the short-sighted, short-termism of corporate shareholders.  

http://nyti.ms/1zlf2lr

Prudential Financial Commits to Build $1 Billion Impact Investment Portfolio by 2020

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140625-906307.html