By Bill Walczak

All around the world, people today know Boston for its social innovation, as they knew it for capital finance and trade 100 years ago, and have known it for more than a hundred years for education and health. It is a world capital of non-profit organizations, called non-governmental-organizations, or NGOs, in other countries. Foreign leaders visit Boston in great numbers to see how Boston has used its NGOs to transform distressed neighborhoods, create new ways to educate, provide services, and build new communities.

Boston is filled with non-profits and I marvel at the way in which the non-profits have filled so many voids in Boston. From creating or renovating thousands of units of housing, to creating health care and social services for hundreds of thousands of people, the non-profits have literally and figuratively saved low and moderate income communities across Boston and across the nation. But beyond the social impact of these organizations, the actions of these non-profits have created an entire economy.

That economy is indeed robust. Twenty-six percent of all jobs in metropolitan Boston are in the non-profit sector, which is a two and a half billion dollar economy in metro-Boston. When Codman Square and Dorchester House Health Centers studied the non-profits of just Dorchester and Mattapan, we found it to be a $315 million economy, employing nearly 6,000 people. Indeed, when you look at most neighborhoods in Boston, you'll find that it is a non-profit, usually a health center, that is the largest employer in that neighborhood, and the major anchor for the area's business district. In central Dorchester, the Codman Square Health Center employs 275 people in nearly 100,000 square feet of commercial space, with a budget of over $15 million, and is responsible for more than 16,000 people per month coming into the nearly fully occupied business district, which into the 1990s was half-abandoned. A Fields Corner without a Dorchester House or an Uphams Corner without an Uphams Corner Health Center would certainly be much less occupied.

A couple of years ago, I was part of a group visiting a Globe editorial writer to talk about our findings in our study of Dorchester and Mattapan non-profits, and the writer asked why Boston's non-profits were so numerous. My only thought was that maybe John Winthrop's vision of Boston as a "City Upon A Hill" has had more staying power than even he would have imagined. At the time I had no idea just how prescient I was, for I had stumbled upon the truth.

It was Puritan New England, far more than any other area of America, which preached the importance of doing good as its dogma. And this command found its way into the lives and minds of colonial Bostonians, where people like Benjamin Franklin grew up understanding that making things better was part of life's expectations. In his autobiography, Ben talks of his father's small library, which contained a few books by Boston minister Cotton Mather, including, "another of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life."

To truly understand the influence of Essays to do Good in the life of Franklin, and in colonial Boston, where an immigrant worker, a "tallow chandler," like Ben's father, Josiah Franklin, would have it in his small library, you should read Walter Isaacson's new biography of Ben Franklin, which is filled with example after example of how the Puritan mindset created what deToqueville marveled at a century later. "These Americans are a peculiar people. If, in a local community, a citizen becomes aware of a human need that is not being met, he thereupon discusses the situation with his neighbors. Suddenly, a committee comes into existence. The committee thereupon begins to operate on behalf of the need and a new community function is established. It is like watching a miracle, because these citizens perform this act without a single reference to any bureaucracy or any official agency." Coming up to the present day, Boston developed and perfected the concept of the public-private partnership - government working with non-profits to improve neighborhoods.

During the "Celebrate Boston!" weeks immediately preceding the Democratic Convention, there was a celebration of social innovation in Boston - all of the firsts and impressive accomplishments of the non-profit sector. Boston should also celebrate social innovation as a Boston invention, one that has spread throughout our country and the world, creating mechanisms for people in communities to fix their own problems and envision a better life for themselves and their communities. Money magazine last year noted that the nonprofit sector is now the third largest part of the national economy, surpassing banking, technology, even the federal government, and that it employs one of every 12 Americans in a $785 billion dollar economy. And it all started here in Boston.

Bill Walczak is a resident of Savin Hill and the executive director of the Codman Square Health Center.