Endowing The Future

Lawrence CommunityWorks, a citywide network that engages thousands of residents to improve their community; and by KABOOM!, a nonprofit that uses a network approach to mobilize low-income communities to build their own playgrounds.

information on the allocation of resources to events with high (and, whenever possible, open-ended) returns. Seizing “free lunches” is critical; channeling local and scarce information into productive collective arrangements is the name of the game.

been—through the concerted proliferation of social services, designed in ways that help people in their moment of need and, as important, fold them into a broader philosophical community.

But generally, the move from government provision of housing, food, and jobs programs to this network of semiprivate organizations introduced perverse incentives into life-sustaining institutions. The result has been a wealth transfer of public money to boards of directors staffed largely by local elites that are more likely to be responsive to rea