RFP OVERVIEW

What Works in Enterprise-Based Solutions to Poverty is a request for proposals (RFP) competition sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation that will award three $500,000 grants to enable think tanks to conduct applied research on issues relating to the potential, power, and significance of enterprise-based solutions to poverty, especially in developing nations. The grant monies may be used for research as well as communications outreach and advocacy aimed at educating opinion leaders—both in the U.S. and overseas—about enterprise-based programs and policies that have a proven track record of alleviating poverty.

Although the long-term trends of wealth creation in the developed world are remarkable, mass poverty in the so-called ‘developing world’ remains one of the most profound and large-scale challenges leaders will face in the 21st century. Approximately 10 percent of the present world population (roughly 600 million people) is estimated to exist at or below an equivalent economic level of ~US$ 1 per day and approximately half of the world population (3 billion people) lives at or below an equivalent economic level of ~US $2 per day. Facing such daunting statistics it is only reasonable to ask: “Why should half of the world’s population live in circumstances of relative squalor when it has been demonstrated that principles of capitalism can lead to sustained economic development?”

What Works in Enterprise-Based Solutions to Poverty seeks to address this question by offering think tanks financial support to document or study cases where free enterprise solutions have led to wealth creation for the poor, then advocate the principles from these successes to the media and policy makers. Critics of globalization have seized the moral high ground by portraying free enterprise and capitalism as ideologies that exploit the poor. While it is important to acknowledge and address the critiques of capitalism’s “creative destruction,” there is also danger in losing sight of the free enterprise system’s unparalleled capacity to generate wealth and raise standards of living across the globe. The aim of this project, then, is to reclaim the moral high ground by demonstrating how free enterprise and other principles of capitalism can, and do, benefit the poor.

Solid data alone, however, is not sufficient for this task. One of the greatest challenges of the new century is to develop effective communication vehicles to increase public understanding on the ways in which free enterprise fosters the creation of wealth and how individuals, communities, cities, nations, and continents can increase their economic prosperity. As Hernando de Soto has argued in his influential The Mystery of Capital, many in the developed world do not clearly understand the foundations of capitalism’s economic dynamism. Encouraging a better public understanding of these foundations and how they can beneficially affect economic growth in the developing world is a major goal of this grants competition.