## Notes from 19 April 2025 [[2025-04-18|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2025-04-20|Next note →]] Read about a new initiative in Colorado — the _[Colorado Partnership for Proven Initiatives](https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/top-three-takeaways-from-the-colorado-partnership-for-proven-initiatives)_, led by Governor [[Jared Polis]] in collaboration with [[Arnold Ventures]]. It combines $20 million in public and philanthropic funding to scale programs with solid evidence of effectiveness. A smart setup: philanthropy not just as a funder, but as a bridge between localized success and statewide scale, helping the public sector place bigger bets on what already works. It reminded me of Germany’s _[Ko-Pionier-Preis](https://reform-staat.org/kopionierpreis/)_ by [[ReForm (ProjectTogether)]], which celebrates public administrations that successfully adopt and adapt proven solutions developed elsewhere. Same idea: structured replication, not just celebration. On an unrelated note, I'm still reading _Abundance_ by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and came across their discussion of the [Tahanan project](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberalism.html) in San Francisco, a supportive housing complex built in three years, for less than $400k per unit. That’s fast and cheap by local standards, but only possible because it avoided using public money and bypassed the usual layers of permitting, procurement and compliance. Private capital set the rules, the city helped with zoning, and an NGO led the process. What struck me was how close this is to something a friend at _[[Gerando Falcões]]_ recently described. It’s a Brazilian organization that works in favelas, and one of its main fronts is territorial development. In some urbanization projects, they don’t just consult communities about what kind of neighborhood they want — they actually use private donations to commission the basic and executive design plans, with full community input, so that when the government finally steps in, the hard part is done. It’s a workaround, but an elegant one. The state becomes a buyer of execution, not of vision. In both cases, the solution is practical and targeted, but it only exists because the underlying system is too broken to deliver well on its own.