On December 13th, the Stanford Social Innovation Review published "Development Impact Bonds: There's Still No Free Lunch" by Kevin Starr. Please read our response below. Dear Kevin, Thank you for starting a conversation on development impact bonds (DIBs), as well as Pay for Success (PFS) more generally. As a practitioner of PFS, I wanted to share [...]

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

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, [...]

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 [...]

“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.

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 [...]