In 2009, the Obama administration established a new initiative, the Social Innovation Fund, or SIF, saying that it would “scale up” existing programs for the poor in three areas — “economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development.”

The fund’s novelty was the way it would “scale up” these programs. The White House would choose an assortment of “intermediary grant making organizations,” such as foundations, which would in turn identify worthy grant recipients. Those recipients would get money from both the government and the intermediaries, and they would also pledge to raise enough money from private donors to match the total they had received.