In the past week the British Government and the Conservative Opposition have each launched new policy papers on international development. Sadly, neither seems to have grasped the implications of the philanthrocapitalism revolution.

The Government’s White Paper is a worthy document covering conflict, economic growth, climate change and a host of other issues.There is a pledge to give more money to nonprofits, think a bit more about nonprofit performance and fund community groups to do ‘innovative’ work. But the paper is short on specifics. We would have welcomed a bolder statement about partnering with philanthrocapitalists and social entrepreneurs to test models that government can scale up, akin to what we are expecting to see from the Obama administration’s Office for Social Innovation. We hope that the British government will take the opportunity to work with philanthrocapitalists on creating a more challenging outcome-based performance framework for nonprofits involved in development.

The Conservative Green Paper acknowledges some of these problems but is rather unimaginative in addressing them. Again, there is more money for nonprofits, but the idea of how that can be a partnership to test models and help government aid work better is absent. This fundamental weakness is camouflaged by a rather gimmicky idea about creating a £40m pot of aid money that the public has a say in allocating. Press reports have likened this to some of the popular online giving sights that are driving mass philanthrocapitalism, but it is really a voting scheme to choose between relatively unimportant alternatives – the aid version of Britain’s Got Talent. This could increase public support for aid, it is true, and perhaps a worthy project will emerge as the aid equivalent of Susan Boyle. But there is no indication that this is intended to shape Britain’s core aid strategy.

A more radical approach would be to create a fund to match donations through champions of mass philanthrocapitalism globalgiving or kiva. By getting people to put up their own money, rather than voting in the abstract about where a small chunk of government money should go, it would be a more meaningful exercise and would give people a far wider range of choices. It could help to stimulate giving in general.

Both parties say they are committed to getting British government aid up to the UN target of 0.7% of national income (it’s just above 0.4% at the moment). Yet - and neither party will say this for obvious reasons - is that pledge realistic? A horrible fiscal crunch is coming, can aid spending really win the political battle over money for schools and hospitals at home? 

There is a lot of thinking taking place at the moment about for-profit models of philanthropy that could provide large sums of money for development, which could help fill the gap if government aid does get squeezed, and may anyway be more effective than much traditional aid. It is a pity that neither party put this on the agenda.