Creating Positive Change with Data and Evaluation – Part I

Brian Beachkofski leads Third Sector’s efforts in data, evaluation, and modeling to include developing and executing strategy, capturing best practices, and providing training.

This post is based off a recent speech I made at the Harvard University Center on Education Policy Research for a meeting of the Proving Ground partners. Proving Ground is an initiative committed to helping education agencies meet their practical needs, by making evidence cheaper, faster, and easier to use. Their goal is to make evidence-gathering and evidence-use an intuitive part of how education agencies conduct their daily

The Pay for Success (PFS) movement has spread to countries around the world. Each country has done PFS for slightly different reasons. For example: in the United Kingdom, PFS has generally angled as a way to get ‘more for less’, whereas in the US, PFS has been viewed by many as a way to test and scale up innovative social programs.

I grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong, and have spent the past two years executing PFS projects around the US.  I believe that PFS could provide a unique value

By Celeste Richie

Along with other critical support services, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and its embedded Pay-for-Performance (P4P) provisions are critical to advancing performance-based contracting and improving long-term outcomes for those served by the workforce system. Despite the appetite for a better life for all individuals, many workforce programs today are unable to deliver similar high-quality results across all of their participants. Recent analysis has demonstrated the need to increase equity of outcomes, not just increased access to services, and WIOA P4P could be an active tool in

By Nadia Ahmed and Melissa Penney

From September 7th to 9th, Third Sector joined other grantees for the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Convening hosted by the Corporation for National & Community Service in Washington, DC. The event gathered government leaders, funders, service providers, and consultants to share their successes and lessons learned in implementing and expanding evidence-based services. The theme of this year’s convening was Risk, Agility, and Resilience, reflected in the many conference sessions on field disruption, course correction, and scaling change.

Throughout the convening, themes of equity and engagement drove

By Nadia Ahmed

On August 28th, Third Sector was invited to the 7th annual Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) Executive Leadership Institute in Austin, TX. For the first time, the two-day conference, in addition to its sessions on the latest in the green and healthy housing movement, offered a parallel set of sessions on Pay for Success (PFS). This brought together government, foundations, providers, evaluators, and organizations with PFS expertise to discuss how such an innovative contracting model can work in the lens of healthcare.

Third Sector participated in a panel

Across the country, a growing number of governments are contracting for human services on a performance basis. Many are implementing innovative cross-sector models like Pay for Success (PFS), with many more considering the model for services in their own communities. This increased appetite for Pay for Success (PFS) partnerships has redirected taxpayer dollars toward interventions that provide data-driven solutions for social impact.

Because PFS is well suited to complex social challenges, there are situations where it is unrealistic to expect a single service provider or intervention to address the multifaceted