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This amendment establishes the Social Innovation Fund, which would support our nation’s social entrepreneurs.  As we heard last month in our hearing on national service, Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green explained that social entrepreneurs, “identify and take responsibility for an innovative and untested idea for positive social change, and then usher that idea from concept to reality.

Social entrepreneurs personify a richness in their communities and develop new and innovative solutions to the problems they see.  Many social entrepreneurs and the community organizations that support them don’t have the capital to expand their initiatives.  The Social Innovation Fund this amendment creates would give these social entrepreneurs the capital to leverage private-public partnerships.  This capital enables them to implement their solutions and replicate their successes in other communities.

Just as accountability, results, transparency and competition are an integral part of success in the private sector, the Social Innovation Fund will use these same principles to implement positive change in our communities.

This is a country of innovators and the Social Innovation Fund supports them and expands the good work that they now do and can further do.  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to offer this amendment and I urge its passage.

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