In February 2019, with generous support from The Kresge Foundation, Third Sector launched the Pay for Success (PFS) in Higher Education National Cohort — a first-in-the-nation cohort of public systems of higher education, college access and success providers, and funders — to use PFS as a way to systematically fund wraparound student support services that [...]

Social service delivery is serious, complex, and expensive. The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars per year on these programs. And yet, this massive universe of funding is often not allocated based on which programs are the most effective or in a way that measures the impact of programs over time. We see a need to change that by supporting the federal government in connecting resources to results and driving the adoption and implementation of outcomes-oriented funding.

In a recent piece in CommonWealth Magazine, Third Sector Director, H. Kay Howard, argues for more funding in the form of a pay for success model to ensure better post-secondary outcomes for Massachusetts students.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” - Albert Einstein Washington State (WA) Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) Secretary Ross Hunter opened with the quote above at the 2019 National TANF State Directors’ Meeting, Helping Families to Overcome: Partnering to Build a Stronger Society on September 18, [...]

Creating a national outcomes-based financing Data Advisory Council (DAC) to capture and share best practices for using data to measure the social impact of outcomes-based financing.  The investment community’s understanding of the impact made by outcome-based financing is hampered by a lack of data. As of now, there are no centralized, holistic databases of impact [...]

This blog series is centered on Third Sector’s assessment on applicability of Pay for Success in higher education in partnership with a new cohort of stakeholders. This is post #4 of the series. “Systems achieve the outcomes they are designed to achieve,” Alex Bernadotte, founder and CEO of Beyond12 shared during a plenary at the National College [...]