Good, if a bit long and technical article by Pavlina R. Tcherneva in Naked Capitalism. Here is a snippet… 

In my research funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, I have argued that part of the JG needs to be done on the basis of a grants-based approach (especially in normal times, during normal business fluctuations), where the communities, nonprofits, and the unemployed themselves can participate in designing, proposing and executing the projects that would be performed in these communities. This is a model fully consistent with the entrepreneurial American spirit.