Third Sector Awarded $2,000,000 Grant to Advance California Workforce Outcomes
Over the next two years, Third Sector will work with up to five nonprofit grantees of The James Irvine Foundation’s Better Careers initiative and up to ten local government agencies to advance economic opportunity in California through a $2M grant from the Foundation. Third Sector will facilitate partnerships between Better Careers grantees and public service agencies to co-design improvements on California’s public workforce funding system and pursue better outcomes in economic opportunity for the people they serve. The initiative will culminate in up to five implementation plans developed through an …
Third Sector News and Updates – June 2019
Updates on PFS in Higher Ed Cohort, New Managing Director of Talent, Impact Management Training Registration, and more!
Four Communities Selected to Receive Training and Technical Assistance in Third Sector’s PFS in Higher Education National Cohort
Third Sector announced its new PFS in Higher Education national cohort today with the selection of four communities that will receive training and technical assistance in using Pay for Success to fund student access and success programs.
New Video on D.E.I Recruitment Process Changes
Third Sector put together a short video to summarize our recent blog series, Strategies for Inclusively and Equitably Building a Diverse Team: Recruitment Process Changes. Third Sector Associate Joanna Kuang and HR Manager Danielle Antico take us through the three parts of the Recruitment Process Changes: Rewriting the Job Description Re-Evaluating the Summer Manager Compensation Package Restructuring the Interviews After watching this video, please follow the links above for more detail, or contact Danielle Antico at dantico@thirdsectorcap.org
Integrated Data Systems and Outcomes-Oriented Contracting: A Powerful Combination for Improving Outcomes Part II
In Part I of this post, we described how outcomes-oriented contracting can leverage linked data to inform government spending and support better service delivery and outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. We also described how Integrated Data Systems (IDS) can supply the critical data needed throughout the outcomes-oriented contracting process. In this post, we dive deeper into outcomes-oriented contracting as a high-value use case for IDS– providing examples from the Empowering Families cohort, outlining key considerations for building IDS, and discussing opportunities to combine these two strategies to enhance your …
Integrated Data Systems and Outcomes-Oriented Contracting: A Powerful Combination for Improving Outcomes Part I
Public agencies and their partners hold important, yet largely unused, administrative data on individuals, families, and communities. These data are routinely collected in the course of service delivery, and taken together, form a rich picture of people’s experiences and trajectories. The challenge is that all too often, each agency, department, or program only has access to one piece of a larger picture. When we start to bring these pieces together, important connections and opportunities are brought to light that can improve the lives of individuals and families. For example, access …
Strategies for Inclusively and Equitably Attracting Diverse Talent Part IIIc: Recruitment Process Changes
This is the fifth of five posts in a series of blog posts that explore Third Sector’s progress in evaluating and redesigning our recruitment practices with a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. Alongside gathering Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) baseline data that now informs our understanding of the composition of our candidate pipeline, we recognize the importance of ensuring each step of our interview process is equitable. Each summer, Third Sector hires two “Summer Managers” to join our team for a 10-week internship assisting with client engagements and special initiatives …
Strategies for Inclusively and Equitably Attracting Diverse Talent Part IIIb: Recruitment Process Changes
This is the fourth of five posts in a series of blog posts that explore Third Sector’s progress in evaluating and redesigning our recruitment practices with a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. Alongside gathering Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) baseline data that now informs our understanding of the composition of our candidate pipeline, we recognize the importance of ensuring each step of our interview process is equitable. Each summer, Third Sector hires two “Summer Managers” to join our team for a 10-week internship assisting with client engagements and special initiatives …
Strategies for Inclusively and Equitably Attracting Diverse Talent Part IIIa: Recruitment Process Changes
This is the third of five posts in a series of blog posts that explore Third Sector’s progress in evaluating and redesigning our recruitment practices with a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. Alongside gathering Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) baseline data that now informs our understanding of the composition of our candidate pipeline, we recognize the importance of ensuring each step of our interview process is equitable. Each summer, Third Sector hires two “Summer Managers” to join our team for a 10-week internship assisting with client engagements and special initiatives …
FINISH Act Could Provide Federal Opportunities for Pay for Success in Higher Education
This blog series is centered on Third Sector’s assessment and applicability of Pay for Success in higher education in partnership with a new cohort of stakeholders. This is blog post #2 of the series. As you may have read in our first blog of this series, we are developing a national cohort of higher education institutions, college access and success providers, and funders that are interested in exploring Pay for Success (PFS) as a way to fund wraparound student support services that improve matriculation, persistence, and graduation outcomes for underserved …
CA Opportunity Zones: Guiding Principles on Outcomes & Metrics
Opportunity Zones are a community development program authorized by the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (2017), with the goal of encouraging patient capital to invest in long-term community development projects. The federal legislation allows newly authorized Opportunity Funds to aggregate and deploy capital by investing a minimum of 90% of assets in designated census tracts and investment types. In return, investors in Opportunity Funds can defer, reduce and even eliminate their federal capital gains taxes after five to ten years of local investment. Read more about how Third Sector …
Empowering Families: Building Quality Feedback Loops to Support Better Outcomes
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 national cohort of communities working to improve outcomes for children and families through the use of Integrated Data Systems (IDS) and outcomes-oriented contracting. Through the Empowering Families Initiative, seven state and county governments have received …
Leveraging Pay for Success in Higher Education Building a National Cohort to Boost Student Success Outcomes
This blog series is centered on Third Sector’s assessment and applicability of Pay for Success in higher education in partnership with a new cohort of stakeholders. This is blog post #1 of the series. National Student Clearinghouse data reveal that while African American and Latinx students are enrolling in postsecondary institutions at similar rates to white peers, they are 11% less likely to matriculate into college the first fall after high school graduation. Additionally, even though the national six-year completion rate reached its highest level for all students in …
Strategies for Inclusively and Equitably Building a Diverse Team Part II: Collection of Demographic Data from Applicants
This is the second in a series of blog posts that explore Third Sector’s progress in evaluating and redesigning our recruitment practices with a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. Central to Third Sector’s role in the social services ecosystem is our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Before formally committing to using a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens to critically examine our culture, norms, and client-facing approaches, we had long recognized the importance of, and worked towards building, a more diverse team. In 2018, we wrote about our blind recruitment …
Moving Beyond Outcomes Measurement to Outcomes Management: Reflections from the 2019 Winter Innovation Summit
This February, the Empowering Families Learning Community convened in Utah’s Wasatch Valley for the cohort’s sixth and final in-person meeting. The Empowering Families Learning Community participated in Sorenson Impact’s annual conference, The Winter Innovation Summit. In addition to participating in the broader conference, Third Sector also hosted a series of breakout sessions that reflected on the impressive work the Learning Community has accomplished to date. During these breakout sessions, Empowering Families sites heard from inspiring guest speakers who are implementing equity-driven and outcomes-oriented contracting strategies across their government agencies, and …
Third Sector to Speak at Florida Philanthropic Network Workshop
Tools for Improving Outcomes for Children and Families: An Interactive Workshop on Selecting Metrics and Building Feedback Loops to Deliver Results On April 4th, Third Sector Director H. Kay Howard and Senior Associate Miranda Beggin, along with Laura Ganci, PhD, LMFT, Director of Research and Evaluation at Children’s Services Council of Broward County (FL) will share multiple examples of learning together in partnership with nonprofit providers to select metrics and leverage data to drive continuous improvement and equity in this interactive workshop. The session will use case studies from the national Pay for …
What’s in a Metric? Practical Considerations for Outcomes Contracting Project Design
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 …
Updates from the Administrative Data Pilot: Weaving data for a holistic picture of program outcomes
In late 2016, Third Sector and Stanford’s Center for Poverty and Inequality (Stanford) were awarded a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant under the Administrative Data Pilot (ADP) category. After a rigorous competition, three sub-grantees were chosen to receive two years of technical assistance from Third Sector and Stanford to develop administrative data infrastructure and outcomes contracting processes, culminating in September 2019. This blog post illuminates how these three projects are using quantitative and qualitative data to improve outcomes for participants in social service programs. “Not everything that can be counted …
The Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) A Federal Opportunity to Pay for Proven Outcomes
Last year a bipartisan congressional effort resulted in a new $100 million fund available to states and local governments seeking funding for exceptional social service programs. The Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) gives governments a new opportunity to take advantage of federal funding to pay for proven outcomes.
Third Sector Asia is Now Tri-Sector Associates
As of February 2019, Third Sector Asia will be officially rebranded as Tri-Sector Associates – a homegrown Asia and Oceania focused brand that will continue to be a global collaboration with Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc. Third Sector is one of the leading organizations in the US in implementing innovative Pay for Success contracting models that drive government resources toward high-performing social programs. Since 2017, its affiliate Third Sector Asia has been exploring how to best adapt the Pay for Success model to the social sector in Asia and Oceania. …