Current government decision-making about policies and funding allocations is too often focused on inputs and outputs rather than on outcomes. It is constrained by the fact that resources are often inefficiently siloed, locked into specific providers or programs, and does not incentivize innovation. It also fails to use research to provide adequate resources for prevention strategies instead choosing to support remediation activities and is impeded by limited availability of, and access to, data. By one measure, the Federal government allocates over $1.5 trillion for social services annually, but only about one percent of that funding is allocated in a way that its impact on those being served is known.[i]

Our failure to demand a focus on outcomes and evidence to address the inefficiencies in our policy and funding structures, and to demand the use of data in our policymaking is evidenced in our education rankings, criminal justice figures, and employment rates. No longer is the United States at the top of international education rankings. Over three quarters of a million young people drop out of school each year, and many who graduate lack the skills that would make them employable.[ii] Only half of the students who enter higher education institutions get a degree on schedule (within five years or less).[iii] Additionally, millions of individuals leave prisons each year with little prospect of becoming self-supporting through legal means, and over half of all people released from prison commit another crime within three years.[iv] Regarding employment, more than two thirds of our children and youth — 34 million Americans between ages 6 and 17 — are not receiving the supports they need to succeed as adults.[v] As a result of these challenges and others, one in seven American youths is neither employed nor in school.[vi] Despite these results, we continue to spend billions of tax dollars every year on safety net and human services programs and billions more on prisons — the public costs of which have increased four-fold in the last twenty years.[vii]

It is imperative that we address these challenges as a nation to ensure the best possible life for children, youth, and adults in communities across this country. At America Forward, we believe that policies and funding that support innovation and evidence-based practices are critical to meeting these challenges. From both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, there has been rhetoric that data and evidence should be used to develop policy, allocate budgets, and award grant dollars to improve the effectiveness of our federal programs. And over the last several years there has been some movement in translating this rhetoric into action through Congressional activities and Administrative efforts.

An example of a policy approach that has been supported and advanced by both Republicans and Democrats that emphasizes evidence, data, and results are federal innovation funds. Over the last several years, five federal evidence-based innovation programs focused on improving outcomes for children, youth, and adults in communities across the country have been created. While these programs vary, they have several common elements: 1) use of evidence to inform receipt of funding; 2) application of a tiered-evidence structure to determine level of funding; and, 3) implementation of rigorous evaluations to assess impact and determine continued support. The five innovation programs include: the Investing in Innovation Fund (now the Evidence Innovation and Research program), the First in the World program, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visitation Program; the Development Innovation Ventures program; and, the Social Innovation Fund.

Despite the focus of these innovation funds on evidence, data, and outcomes, each needs to be continuously defended even in the midst of this desired movement towards an evidence-based policymaking approach to government. In fact, just last week, Congress chose to defund one of these innovation funds, the Social Innovation Fund.

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) awards grants to and works with existing grant-making institutions to direct resources to innovative community-based nonprofit organizations. The purpose of the SIF is to improve the lives of people in low-income communities by increasing the impact and scale of these innovative community-based organizations and approaches in the areas of youth development, economic opportunity, and healthy futures. A key element of the SIF model is the requirement of an evaluation as part of every grant to build the evidence of what works. In addition to growing and evaluating promising community-based solutions, SIF funding is also used to test Pay for Success — a new approach for government to fund proven community-based solutions.

The significant emphasis on using evidence of program impact — over 90 rigorous evaluations have been supported, a funding model that utilizes public funding to leverage private dollars — $340 million in federal investments have leveraged over $650 million in nonfederal and private sector funds, and the focus on innovative community-based solutions — more than 1,800 local organizations across 46 states and the District of Columbia — are elements that make SIF a unique federal program and one that has realized significant results.

Namely, through these grants over half a million individuals have been served in low-income communities across the country. And the evaluations of SIF programs, that have been completed to date, have found positive effects in the areas of workforce training, employment services, personal (income) savings, reading education, and childhood health.

In addition to these outcomes, the SIF has also helped to identify how to effectively engage in evaluations and use data to determine a program’s impact. This element of SIF is important not only to those entities engaged in the program but is also in helping to build the movement to using research more broadly to drive public policy and to using evaluations to determine which government programs work and which do not. Below are just a few examples of SIF’s impact to providers, Individuals, and communities.

Nonprofit Finance Fund and Corporation for Supportive Housing/Homelessness

America Forward Coalition members Nonprofit Finance Fund and Corporation for Supportive Housing are both working with states, localities, and nonprofit providers in studying and supporting the use of Pay for Success in the funding of community-based solutions. A recently launched Pay for Success project in Denver, which is focused on the use of permanent supportive housing to more effectively address the needs of chronically homeless individuals in its community, benefitted from a SIF Pay for Success transaction structuring grant. These grant dollars played an important role in helping to build the partnerships, identifying the investors, and supporting the evaluation structure for this Pay for Success project that is focused on improving the lives of one of Denver’s most high need populations.

Reading Partners/Youth Development

America Forward Coalition member Reading Partners provides literacy training for elementary students who are six to 30 months behind in their reading skills. Previous research has found that one-on-one tutoring by certified teachers helps close this gap, but it is expensive. The Reading Partners literacy training program is a less expensive alternative that relies on volunteer tutors operating in reading centers.

The evaluation conducted of the program under SIF used a randomized controlled trial. It found that the program produced positive and statistically significant gains in reading proficiency equal to one and a half to two months over the course of a single academic year when compared to other supplementary reading programs. The evaluation also shows that the expense to participating schools is less than half of other supplemental reading programs.

REDF/Economic Opportunity

REDF, an America Forward Coalition member, provides funding through its SIF grant to subgrantees that operate social enterprises that hire and provide supportive services to people who face barriers to work, including: 1) individuals with mental health disabilities, 2) parolees or others who were informally incarcerated, and 3) disconnected youth who were not enrolled in school or participating in the labor market. Various evaluations were conducted of the subgrantees, including an implementation studies, an outcomes and/or impact studies, and a cost-benefit analysis.

A quasi-experimental impact study compared individuals who were hired to those who applied but were not hired. It found that after one year, although both groups experienced substantial employment gains because both received supportive services, those that were hired were more likely to be employed after one year. Additionally, for every dollar spent by the social enterprise, there was a return of $1.34 in total benefits to society and that dollar of investment generated $0.42 in taxpayer savings.

Third Sector Capital Partners/Workforce Development

Through support from a SIF Pay for Success grant, America Forward Coalition member Third Sector Capital Partners (Third Sector) is working with five jurisdictions to study and test the use of Pay for Success as a mechanism to bring greater innovation and impact to youth workforce development programming. In 2014, through passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), states and localities are now authorized to use Pay for Success in contracting for workforce and job training services. This authority was included in this bipartisan piece of legislation because of a desire to bring a greater emphasis to the use of evidence and outcomes in the allocation of federal workforce and job training funding. Third Sector’s SIF grant funded work is critical to helping jurisdictions invent and test new ways of contracting for youth workforce development services to translate this new evidence-based policy into practice.

If policymakers are serious about being more outcomes-focused and evidence-driven when making policy and funding decisions, the core criteria that should be used when making these decisions is whether a program, as a core element of its work, tracks data and measures impact or if it supports efforts to rigorously evaluate and use outcomes-based contracting for federal programs. If it does, policy ideas such as innovation funds and specific programs such as the Social Innovation Fund should easily be supported.

Nicole Truhe is America Forward’s Government Affairs Director.

[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/can-government-play-moneyball/309389/

[ii] Press Release, America’s Promise Alliance, 28 Apr. 2014, http://www.americaspromise.org/news/2014-building-gradnation-report-released.

[iii] http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/13retain_trends.pdf

[iv] Jacquelyn Rivers, “Improving Criminal Justice and Reducing Recidivism Through Justice Reinvestment,” Bureau of Justice Assistance, August 2011, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/pdf/JRI_FS.pdf.

[v] “Every Child, Every Promise: Turning Failure into Action,” America’s Promise Alliance, Sept. 2007, http://www.americaspromise.org/Resources/Research-and-Reports/~/media/Files/About/ECEP%20Workforce%20Brief.ashx.

[vi] Bidwell, Allie, “5.6 Million Youths Out of School, Out of Work,” U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 20, 2014. Retrieved from: http://opportunitynation.org/latest-news/5-6-million-youths-school-work/.

[vii] Jacquelyn Rivers, “Improving Criminal Justice and Reducing Recidivism Through Justice Reinvestment,” Bureau of Justice Assistance, August 2011, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/pdf/JRI_FS.pdf.

At America Forward, we believe that innovation and evidence are needed to more effectively address our country’s most pressing social problems. There are many challenges that we face as a nation that seem intractable yet imperative that we find a way to address to ensure the best possible life for children, youth and adults in communities across this country. Whether it is a growing achievement gap in schools, declining childhood health indicators, or high unemployment rates amongst certain populations, effective solutions are needed and a stronger social sector is critical to changing these trajectories.

By one measure, the Federal government allocates over $1.5 trillion for social services annually, but only about one percent of that funding is allocated in a way that its impact on those being served is known.[1] This is because government decision-making about policies enacted and funding allocated is too often focused on inputs and outputs rather than on results. It is constrained by the fact that resources are often siloed and locked into specific providers or programs. And, it is impeded by the limited availability of, and access to, data.

Making government more effective is a bipartisan idea that both Republican and Democratic led Administrations and Congresses have embraced in various forms through the years. Most recently, this bipartisan approach to policy and funding decision-making has resulted in the authorization of the Social Innovation Fund, funding for the Workforce Innovation Fund and Investing in Innovation Fund, the emphasis on data and results in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the creation of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. These examples showcase the possibility of support from both sides of the aisle for making decisions about policies and funding levels that are based on data, outcomes, and that have the greatest ability to meaningfully improve the lives of all Americans.

Recent discussions in Washington around the release of the Administration’s ‘skinny budget’, which provided some insights into the executive branch’s thinking about what the federal government should be paying for and at what level, insinuated evidence and outcomes as core elements of how those decisions were reached. As was pointed out in a Politico article written in the wake of that discussion as well as a piece from Results for America, the majority of federal programs have never been evaluated, funding has not been consistently targeted or allocated to practices supported by evidence, and only recently has a concerted effort been undertaken to try and change these realities.

If our federally elected officials are genuine about using data and outcomes in their decision-making and creating an evidence-based policymaking environment that drives the work underway at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, they must embrace the idea that it will take time to make this shift. This change will be hard and will require difficult decisions, which will include cutting some programs, eliminating others, redirecting funds from one intervention to another, and yes, even increasing funding for certain programs or activities. But it is not a process that will happen quickly and it is one that requires a surgical approach to ensure that the right decisions are made because beyond every dollar spent, cut, or saved is an individual American who will be impacted.

At America Forward, we champion innovative, effective, and efficient solutions that help to build a stronger social sector to tackle our country’s most pressing social problems. We do this through a network of more than 70 social innovation organizations who are driving progress in areas such as education, workforce development, early learning, public health, pay for success, and national service in more than 14,500 communities nationwide, touching the lives of 8 million Americans each year. Our work is grounded in the real world, community-based experiences of these organizations and those they serve. This grounding serves us extremely well in not only identifying and championing policy solutions that will have meaningful effect but also in tying those policy ideas to real people for whom these solutions have touched and produced real impact. Our advocacy work is based on a belief that in times of greater demand for human and social services and tighter budgets, we must work together to direct government resources to programs that work and that measurably improve people’s lives.

That is why we believe that to move towards a policymaking environment that incentivizes innovation, focuses on outcomes, and rewards results, government must embrace the idea that it is a movement with many stages that needs to be focused on and resourced continuously. Policies must support the invention (R&D) of innovative, effective approaches. Resources must be allocated to test or evaluate these inventions. Implementation activities need to be supported and those activities must include the flexibility to use government funding to focus on outcomes. Resources to invest in successful inventions and organizations at scale must also be prioritized. And finally, this movement needs to include an openness to continuously improve as factors impact the need for new inventions or additional testing of current approaches. This necessitates the resourcing of continuous quality improvement evaluations and supporting data development and organizational infrastructure.

This rethinking requires policymakers to consider both the elements of government and provider ecosystems that need to be supported and how funding should be authorized for use. Specific administrative actions as well as legislative measures should include:

· Hiring individuals who have knowledge in data collection and analysis, program evaluation, and continuous quality improvement;

· Investing in updated data systems to support data analysis and the sharing of data to decrease the cost of and increase the ability to conduct evaluations;

· Allowing access to and greater use of existing (administrative) datasets;

· Resourcing evaluations as a core element of the receipt of discretionary, mandatory, and even entitlement funding;

· Allocating funding based on tiered-evidence frameworks that target resources to programs that have greater evidence of effectiveness;

· Resourcing innovation or R&D funds across government to develop and scale effective interventions;

· Authorizing the use of new contracting (i.e. Pay for Success or Pay for Performance) and compliance approaches that emphasize outcomes over inputs and outputs; and,

· Supporting the work of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.

Over the coming weeks, Washington will be debating funding limits for federal programs for both the current and upcoming federal fiscal years. Many factors will be weighed when determining these levels for both the defense and non-defense sectors and across program areas such as education, health, and housing. If policymakers are serious about being more outcomes-based in how they make funding decisions, they need to be aware of the evidence available regarding federally-supported interventions, they must be informed about federal programs that use evidence as a key component of their work, and they need to consider supporting measures that will create a social sector capable of driving impact and developing the evidence of what works.

To help in this effort, America Forward is launching a blog series entitled Evidence in Action. America Forward Coalition members and network partners will elevate examples of where data and evidence are being used, highlight programs for which outcomes are collected and where impact has been evaluated, and illustrate policy ideas that are indicative of evidence-based policymaking.

Behind every data point and every dollar is an individual and a community impacted by choices made and not made about how to use that data and spend that dollar. Through this series and our ongoing advocacy work, we hope to elevate policies and programs that best help communities find and test new and scale up current ways of tackling their most seemingly intractable problems and use and build evidence to measurably improve people’s lives. Join us in this discussion and tell us how you see #EvidenceinAction in your communities every day.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/can-government-play-moneyball/309389/

Nicole Truhe is America Forward’s Government Affairs Director.

The conversations with policy leaders that shape our future intensify during a presidential campaign. And, not just on the debate stage, but at rallies, in diners, at town halls, and on rope lines

Over the course of this 2016 election cycle, the America Forward Coalition of more than 70 innovative, evidence-based, community organizations banded together to join the conversation and offer solutions to some of our country’s most pressing challenges related to education, workforce development, and poverty alleviation. We are united by a commitment to building partnerships and translating innovative local solutions into national change.

Our mission was — and continues to be — to show current and aspiring elected officials both the challenges Americans face and the breakthrough solutions communities have created. With the election behind us, we reflect on our accomplishments and stand ready to continue to promote proven, bipartisan solutions that create opportunity for all Americans.

Looking back on the 2016 election cycle

Amid a divisive election cycle, we understood the need to highlight what is working in this country and identify how we can scale those programs that effectively address the needs of children, youth, and families across American.

Laying the Groundwork

A year before the election, America Forward Coalition launched its 2016 Presidential Engagement Campaign to promote innovative policy ideas that align with our agenda of elevating effective, local solutions to the national level. We released a briefing book for the Presidential candidates and policy makers — Moving America Forward: Innovators Lead the Way to Unlocking America’s Potential — filled with the most effective approaches to addressing our country’s deepest social challenges. The work ahead of us was driven by the goal of uniting the social entrepreneur community in a national policy dialogue that would bring social innovation policy to the forefront in the 2016 election.

Meetings and Briefings

We took a boots-on-the-ground approach and met the campaigns out on the trail, from Nevada to Ohio to Florida. Driven by our coalition’s work in local communities, we held nearly 30 briefings with senior campaign staff on a range of policy solutions. By holding calls, briefings, and roundtables, our coalition organizations shared policy ideas with every major Presidential campaign. Many of our on-the-ground organizers met with the candidates themselves, talking with Governor Kasich on the rope line, asking Dr. Carson questions about the barriers Today’s Students face, and hosting Secretary Clinton in Las Vegas at YouthBuild USA, where she met with young people working towards credentials and developing new job skills.

Today’s Student Town Halls

We’ve learned from our community-based organizations that nothing is more powerful than hearing directly from people themselves about the real challenges they’re facing. That is why we organized town halls in the battleground states at the time of the political conventions to enable campaign staff and local elected officials to hear directly from a diverse cohort of Americans seeking higher education. Today’s post-secondary students are more diverse, older, financially independent, often working full time, and taking care of families while earning a degree. By hearing directly from today’s students, tomorrow’s policy leaders can shift the mental model of who Today’s Students really are.

Our Today’s Student Town Halls were widely attended by students, community partners, institutional leaders, local elected officials, and campaign staff. Students took to the floor to share their stories, highlighting the tremendous potential and real challenges associated with their higher education experiences. We heard from students like Rob who said, “For the first time I had failed a class…people tell you to be a student first, but it´s hard to be a student when you don´t have a roof over your head…. They need to be aware of what $40,000 in students loans looks like.”

We did not just lift up these powerful stories and work to bust the myths about today’s. We also shared ways to restructure our higher education system — providing concrete examples of programs and policies to help all students succeed.

#TodaysStudent Twitter Town Hall (with images, tweets) · America_Forward

Looking Ahead and Moving America Forward

While we celebrate our ability to reach the campaigns, we recognize our work is far from over. President-elect Trump and Members of Congress have a powerful opportunity to support policies that lift up innovative community solutions that nurture the potential of all Americans, by measuring what matters, investing in what works, and cultivating cross-sector partnerships that facilitate the research and development of future innovations and evidence-driven programs.

Throughout 2017, we will continue to meet with policymakers to offer up actionable policy ideas to make this vision a reality.

Our message is simple: Let’s invest in what works and scale up the community solutions that are best serving America. Specifically, we will promote:

UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS. Nonprofit and community-based organizations are employing roughly 10 percent of the country’s workforce, a number that has stayed consistent even during the latest economic recession. Let’s examine existing programs to open federal funding streams to proven organizations, expand the capacity of effective social entrepreneurs and nonprofits, and facilitate private sector investments in innovative programs by establishing a White House Office of Local Solutions and Entrepreneurship.

INVESTING IN EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS. Cross-sector partnerships are needed to support and scale high-quality community-based organizations and promising solutions for local problems. The tax system has historically been utilized to effectively incentivize investment in public policy priorities such as affordable housing. A new Community Solutions Tax Credit option could be used to scale high-impact, community-based solutions that address education, workforce development, and poverty alleviation by aligning the decision-making about investment with local plans and community needs.

ADVANCING A PAY FOR RESULTS AGENDA. Current government decision-making about policy and funding allocations is too often focused on inputs and outputs rather than on results. Making government more effective is a bipartisan idea that both Republican and Democratic administrations have embraced in various forms through the years. To build on this momentum, the next Administration should develop a Pay for Results agenda that supports policies and funding decisions that focus on results over inputs and outputs, that help unlock siloed resources, and that support development of and access to data.

UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORTING ALL LEARNERS. One in five students in the U.S. have a learning disability, like dyslexia, dyscalculia or ADHD. Let’s drive progress and move the dialogue to the mainstream by discussing research-based approaches to addressing learning and attention issues, the impact of trauma, and how to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities and place them on a ladder of success. This could be accomplished through a White House Conference on Overcoming Barriers: Education and the American Dream to empower millions of families to make informed decisions about their students’ learning experience, and catalyze partnerships between community advocates and educators.ormed decisions about their students’ learning experience, and catalyze partnerships between community advocates and educators.

SCALING OUTCOMES-DRIVEN COLLEGE ACCESS AND SUCCESS PROGRAMS. As discussed above, the vision many of us have of a typical college student is no longer accurate. For instance, 40 percent of all today’s students are older than 25. The next Administration should create an Accelerating College Access and Success Fund to develop and scale innovations and organizations that increase college access, persistence, and completion, particularly for underrepresented students.

VALIDATING AND CREDENTIALING JOB READY SKILLS. Many employers today have identified a shortage of qualified workers for the estimated five million available jobs in the U.S. This reality is coupled with the fact that by 2020, 65% of jobs will require a post-secondary education in some form. Through the development and implementation of new outcomes-driven forms of credentialing and certification, we can improve post-secondary outcomes for students and reward in-demand skills that fill the skills gap in the economy.

CREATING GREATER OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE AMERICANS TO SERVE. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who want to perform a service are turned away every year due to limited openings. National service programs can advance key agency goals cost-effectively, all while investing in the training and development of America’s workforce. President-elect Trump should increase the number of available full-time National Service positions so that any American who feels compelled to serve may do so.

Our country is strongest when we work together and learn from our local communities. The timing could not be more critical. As a nation, we have a unique opportunity to leverage proven, bipartisan solutions and create lasting pathways to opportunity for all Americans. Our work is cut out for us; and the time is now. Learn more at AmericaForward.org and join us as we challenge President-elect Trump to move all of America Forward.