Our Services

Our mission is to transform public systems to advance improved and equitable outcomes. We collaborate with government agencies and communities to develop innovative approaches that align policy, dollars, data, and services around improved social outcomes.

• We support our partners in bravely leveraging data to shift culture, policy and practice for more equitable systems.
• In our roles as facilitators and conveners, we seek to learn from equity-centered community leaders. Led by curiosity, we build relationships rooted in listening, appreciation and acceptance to foster collaboration. We work across social impact practice areas with a variety of partners including government agencies, philanthropy, community-based organizations, and other service providers. 
• We reflect humbly on how we impact the field, our partners, community members, and each other.
• We co-create projects with our partners that aim to uncover root causes of inequity, implement data-driven and community-driven solutions, and set up sustainable systems for collective learning and continuous improvement. 
• We acknowledge the harm of racist structures in our public institutions and help our partners combat the effects of white supremacy and other oppressions as an essential condition to better outcomes and racial equity.
• Recognizing the value of experience both using and delivering public programs, we elevate community and provider perspectives to support the design and implementation of person-centered public systems.
• We scale impact by connecting changemakers across sectors, agencies, and areas to share information and inspiration.

Our Approach to Building Outcomes Focused Government

Third Sector’s Outcomes-Focused Technical Assistance (OFTA) model provides communities with a collaborative and flexible approach that is built on community goals and needs. Through the OFTA approach, Third Sector can guide communities in making funding decisions rooted in community need, driven by data, intentional on advancing racial equity, and aligned with broader systems goals. 

The components of the OFTA approach include:

1. SET GOALS: Build consensus among key stakeholders on the most important outcomes to be improved for a given population with explicitly focus on equity for underserved communities.
2. USE DATA: Analyze existing quantitative data from administrative sources and qualitative data from stakeholders in order to understand current outcomes, uncover inequities, and establish key outcome metrics
3. PARTNER: Develop and implement strategies to overcome barriers caused by program silos through partnerships and collaboration around funding, enrollment, service delivery and data 
4. INCENTIVIZE: Create meaningful incentives for the achievement of both near- and longer-term outcome goals, including the use of outcomes-based funding
5. IMPLEMENT: Identify and implement a set of evidence-informed, cross-cutting practices that have the greatest potential to drive better outcomes and address inequities
6. ASSESS: Develop and implement an assessment strategy to determine the impact of system change against the stated goals and metrics of success
7. LEARN: Create a robust continuous improvement process to regularly review data and adapt as needed to keep improving resultsSYSTEMATIZE:  Devise strategies to sustain and scale revised management policies, practices and behaviors once feasibility and impact is established

Testimonials

“I valued all of Third Sector services. Your quality was excellent. It wasn’t just “we agreed we would do x and here is x”; it was more that we agreed we would do X but also Y and Z are other considerations and we explore those too. Third Sector was thinking about other potential challenges and outcomes and that meant a lot to me as well.”

Brooke Valle, Vice President of Strategy
San Diego Workforce Partnership