Author Archive

Meet a Young Woman we call Rose. Rose is a representative composite of the 4.6 million Americans between 16 and 24 who don’t have full-time employment and are not in school. Like many of her peers, Rose has been juggling several part-time minimum-wage jobs while also serving as the primary caregiver of Samuel, her 2—year-old son. [...]

Last month, the Empowering Families Learning Community co-hosted a webinar with Listen4Good, an initiative of the Fund for Shared Insight. This blog post highlights key learnings from the webinar and  opportunities for readers interested in building some of these best practices in their own context. Overview of Empowering Families: The Empowering Families Initiative is a [...]

With the recent release of the Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) notice of funding availability, communities across the country are exploring opportunities to apply for the first-ever dedicated federal funding supporting outcomes contracting. While SIPPRA requires projects to focus on verifiable metrics across 21 priority issue areas, the particular metrics are quite flexible – and the 21st issue area gives communities considerable room for innovation. As a result, policy makers, agency leaders and community organizations are wrestling with which metrics to include in their applications for

Like most industries, government-funded social services agencies have become increasingly data-driven in recent years. This increased use of data has allowed agencies to better understand the needs of the people they serve and allocate resources more effectively. However, as we outlined in our last blog post, there are risks to an overreliance on data, especially [...]

In October 2017, the Children’s Services Council of Broward County, Florida (CSC Broward) was selected to participate in Empowering Families, Third Sector’s national cohort of communities working to improve outcomes for children and families. This cohort is supported by a 2016 Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant*. Through this cohort, Third Sector, along with Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), will provide sites with two years of technical assistance (TA) to develop both Integrated Data Systems (IDS) and an outcomes-oriented contracting approach.

At Third Sector, we primarily work with state and local