The $100 million Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) is a federal funding opportunity to scale outcomes-driven solutions that benefit communities across government funding silos. Round 2 Applications for Feasibility Study will soon be open during Fall this year.  State and local governments are invited to explore outcomes-oriented readiness through Round 2 funding, which will be used to cover 50% of the cost of a Feasibility Study. Third Sector looks forward to supporting communities and is available to partner with agencies to create an Outcomes Implementation Plan …

The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Third Sector staff led a two-day convening on how to align data, public funding, policy, and programs to improve outcomes for 18-24 year-old youth & young adults through community colleges’ platforms.  50+ attendees represented state departments of Labor, Education, and Human Services; workforce boards; community and technical colleges; service providers; universities; and state data centers from nine Southern and Southwestern states (AR, KY, MD, MS, NE, NM, RI, TX, & VA). Each state formed a “team” of experts to work directly with Third Sector staff …

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 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.

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

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.