Social Impact Accounting The Future Benchmark of Impact and Performance Measurement?
For the past five months, I’ve been helping Third Sector research the nascent field of social impact accounting – the practice of measuring and quantifying the social impact of organizations and investments. Third Sector was interested in exploring the demand for social impact accounting among investors and philanthropic organizations, as well as investigating opportunities to apply the lessons the firm has learned from its Pay for Success work more broadly. While generalized social impact accounting principles are accepted and widely used today, they are a relatively recent development: The Financial …
SIM TIG Week: The Pay for Success Model by Brian Beachkofski and Jeannie Friedman
This post originally appeared on the AEA365 blog as part of their SIM TIG Week. Hello! We are Brian Beachkofski and Jeannie Friedman, Pay for Success (PFS) advisors at Third Sector Capital Partners. We spend most of our time assessing feasibility and designing social sector programs with rigorous evaluations and evidence-based interventions embedded into their contracting structure. PFS is an innovative contracting model (shown in the figure below) that drives government resources toward high-performing social programs. The PFS model is designed to merge performance measurement using administrative data and rigorous …
Data at Scale Why we’re excited about administrative data and our government partners in the Administrative Data Pilot
The prevalence of data in the social sector means that government agencies and nonprofit providers, in theory, have a wealth of information at their disposal to understand what works and more effectively deploy resources to achieve better outcomes. Administrative data (data collected by governments or nonprofits as part of administering a specific program) in particular provides a cost-effective and accurate way to understand participant outcomes and break the silos between agencies serving similar populations who operate in different policy domains. The practical reality is that providers and government agencies cannot …
Evidence in Action Strengthening Workforce Development through Pay for Performance
This article originally appeared on America Forward’s blog as a part of their Evidence in Action series. Follow along on Twitter with #EvidenceinAction and catch up on the series here. Thanks to the persistence of social entrepreneurs across the country, every day we see strategies that are working and delivering results in a rapidly changing world. This Evidence in Action blog series highlights the voices of the more than 70 social innovation organizations that make up the America Forward Coalition, the results-driven solutions our community has for our country’s most pressing …
Strategies for Elevating Social Impact Three Lessons from the Wharton Social Impact Conference
Social impact is a dynamic and growing field, with many different types of actors who each have unique strategies and goals. The Wharton Social Impact Conference, hosted by the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, brought together leaders in the space to discuss their approaches, emphasizing innovative tools and models. While social impact crosses fields, many practitioners are thinking about common themes, directly related to our work at Third Sector. As we bring together stakeholders to orient social services towards outcomes, we often think about how to best leverage data, the long-term …
The Next Phase of Pay for Success Driving Public Sector Outcomes
When we started Third Sector six years ago, my co-founders and I had a fundamental assumption: the increasing availability of data would empower government to allocate its resources to programs that measurably improve lives. We began by testing Pay for Success (PFS) as a contracting tool to catalyze this shift. Six years and six PFS contracts later, we are proud of our work reallocating over $100M in public sector funding to outcomes-driven programs. But we have also found our central assumption challenged in three ways: Public sector data infrastructure is …
Stanford and Third Sector Launch Partnerships for Economic Opportunity
Third Sector Capital Partners and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality will provide assistance in evaluating social programs that address homelessness, unemployment, and family disadvantage. The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and Third Sector Capital Partners have joined with three state and local governments to develop a new big-data infrastructure for evaluating programs that aim to increase economic opportunity. The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, the Santa Cruz Human Services Department, and the Washington Department of Early Learning will receive research and development support …
Creating Positive Change with Data and Evaluation – Part III: Impact Evaluation
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 …
Creating Positive Change with Data and Evaluation – Part II: Incentive Alignment
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 …
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 …
The Unique Value of PFS for Asia
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 …
Third Sector Capital Partners Announces New CEO Caroline Whistler
Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc. (Third Sector) Board of Directors formally announced today new roles for co-founders Caroline Whistler and George Overholser. Beginning March 15, 2017, Caroline Whistler will be promoted to President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and George Overholser will transition from his current role as CEO to Board Chair. Whistler and Overholser, along with Third Sector board member Drew von Glahn, established the organization in 2011 to accelerate America’s transition to a performance-driven social sector. As leading innovators and implementers in the field of outcomes-based social policy, …
Values That Drive Change
At Third Sector, we believe that our value-based approach is integrally tied to our success. We often find it difficult to explain what we do without also explaining how we do it. Each of our engagements with governments, service providers, funders, and other stakeholders is shaped by our culture, and nothing explains our culture better than our mission and values. Third Sector’s mission, to accelerate America’s transition to a performance-driven social sector, does more than simply set out what we are trying to do. More importantly, it implies three crucial points …
Now Accepting Applications for the SIF Administrative Data Pilot
Third Sector and Stanford are pleased to announce that application materials for the Administrative Data Pilot are now live! The Application Guide, Application Form, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions are now available for interested potential applicants and other parties. Applications are due February 17th. The project webpage has also been updated with links to these materials. Don’t forget about the second informational webinar, scheduled for January 18, 2017 at 11:30 AM PST, where Third Sector and Stanford will review the application materials and answer questions from potential applicants. Interested parties may register …
Register now for 12/14 webinar on new Administrative Data Pilot competition
The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI) and Third Sector Capital Partners invite interested local governments in California, Oregon, and Washington state to apply for services under a federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Administrative Data Pilot (ADP) grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. At least three local governments conducting outcomes-oriented projects focused on economic opportunity will be selected to receive services under the program. Selected applicants will receive ongoing assistance in linking federal data (U.S. Census, IRS tax data, etc.) with local/state datasets, and technical assistance designed to …
Illinois Announces Pay for Success Initiative for Dually-Involved Youth
Rauner Administration Moves to Improve Outcomes for Dually-Involved Youth Pay for Success initiative aims to reduce stays in institutional care, prevent repeat criminal behavior CHICAGO – Governor Bruce Rauner and Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) Director George Sheldon today announced the next step to improving outcomes for youth who are involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems through a first-of-its-kind pay for success initiative. “Many youth in the juvenile justice system have endured a breakdown in their families,” said Governor Rauner. “This project is …
WIOA Pay-for-Performance is a Critical Tool for Equity and Opportunity
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 …
Third Sector Receives $2.4 Million Grant from Social Innovation Fund to Build Pay for Success Programs in Local Communities
Largest federal Pay for Success Round 2 grant will establish “Performance Hubs” and tools for communities to embed data analytics into service delivery programs for child welfare, homelessness, and juvenile justice services. Third Sector is pleased to announce that it has received a $2.4 million federal grant from the Social Innovation Fund, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, to create a tech-enabled ecosystem of high-quality data for service providers and develop the pipeline of “Pay for Success (PFS)-ready” governments. The project is also funded by a …
Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and Third Sector to Lead Innovation and Evaluation Program for Reducing Poverty and Inequality
White House Features New Social Innovation Award The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality launched today a new $3 million partnership with Third Sector Capital Partners, the Social Innovation Fund, the Ballmer Group, and the White House Office of Social Innovation to build an administrative-data framework for measuring and evaluating the success of social service programs designed to reduce poverty and inequality. A $1.5 million grant was awarded by the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, after a rigorous nationwide competition. The …
Third Sector Participates in SIF Convening
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 …
