Category Archive for : ‘Blog’

Lessons for Effective Economic Mobility Work at both the Program and the Systems-Level

Coaching has become an increasingly popular method of intervention and has proven effective in a variety of settings. Economic Mobility Pathways (“EMPath”), for example, has codified a mentorship model that uses holistic goal-setting and individualized coaching to support people’s journeys out of the cycle of poverty. I first encountered the EMPath model during Third Sector’s work with the Department of Transitional Assistance on the Young Parents Program. There, we used EMPath’s Bridge to Self-Sufficiency (the “Bridge”) as a way to define and measure progress in a more nuanced way than

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Race and Data: Co-creating Solutions

This is the third and final blog post in our three-part Race and Data series. In part one, we reflected on the potential dangers of over-relying on easily accessible data due to systemic racism, flawed collection, or biased analysis. In part two, we explored how thoughtful disaggregation can begin to mitigate those dangers. And finally, [...]
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Race and Data: Identifying Race-based Disparities

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 [...]
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Race and Data: Race as a Predictive Factor

“Hi Siri – what’s the weather today?”

“Okay Google, is there life on Mars?”

“Alexa, add toothpaste to my cart.”

It is hard to argue that data and technology have not fundamentally changed our day-to-day lives, in many ways for the better. Therefore, the growing application of data in the social sector has created general excitement across various stakeholders – government officials, service providers, and philanthropic partners. From assessing policy decisions to determining resource allocations, the use of data and evaluation is slowly becoming the norm rather than the exception.

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Reflections from the Empowering Families Learning Community Gathering in Denver

In early October, Third Sector and our data partner, Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), convened state and local government leaders from around the country to discuss effective steps to launching and sustaining Integrated Data Systems (IDS), as well as deploying that data to improve community outcomes. This was the third time the Empowering Families [...]
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From Social Impact Bonds to Social Venture Equity

This post originally appeared on Nonprofit Finance Fund’s Blog and is co-authored by Deirdre Flynn, Associate Director, Pay for Success Program.

The Pay for Success (PFS) field has gone through astonishing changes in the years since the first contracts launched in the US. Those early projects (Rikers Island, Massachusetts Juvenile Justice, New York CEO, Cuyahoga) all only wavered from the original concept in minor ways. In brief, those projects all had payment based on a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) evaluation with the vast majority of success payments linked to the formal population-level

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