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Nonprofit Fund Faces Questions About Conflicts and Selection Procedures
In late July, the Social Innovation Fund, a new $50 million federal program aimed at financing the replication of nonprofit programs that work, made its first grants.

But what was supposed to have been an emblem of the administration’s commitment to nonprofit groups has become instead a messy controversy over potential conflicts of interest and the process used to select the grantees.

Several of the 48 independent reviewers who vetted the initial 54 applications for the grants were surprised by some of the winners because they had awarded them mediocre scores.

Critics noted that the executive director of the fund, Paul Carttar, had worked at New Profit Inc., a nonprofit group that helps promising social programs. New Profit Inc. received a $5 million grant from the fund.

Similarly, Patrick Corvington, the official who oversees the Corporation for National and Community Service, where the fund resides, previously worked for a foundation that financed a program operated by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, better known as LISC. The foundation won a $4.2 million grant. ...

...Steven Goldberg, one of the reviewers, a consultant and author of “Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets: Why Philanthropy Doesn’t Advance Social Progress,” said he had no problem with destroying the paperwork related to the review — “as a lapsed lawyer, I can see that you don’t want people to be looking too much at how the sausage gets made”— but thought it would be a good idea to publish the names of the reviewers and applicants. ...