Lessons From the Social Innovation Fund

Abstract

Tiered evidence initiatives are an important federal strategy to incentivize and accelerate the use of rigorous evidence in planning, implementing, and assessing social service investments. The Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, adopted a public–private partnership approach to tiered evidence. What was learned from implementing this ambitious program? How can large funding initiatives promote evaluation capacity in smaller organizations and evidence building in a sector broadly, increasing knowledge about how to address important social problems? And what can evaluators and evaluation technical assistance providers not working within a tiered evidence framework learn from the SIF? We provide an overview of the SIF model and describe how the fund operationalized “evidence building.” Materials developed to support SIF grantees represent practical, best practice strategies for successfully completing rigorous, relevant evaluations. Key lessons from overseeing over 130 evaluations—and their utility for other local evaluators—are discussed.

Social innovation in a post-conflict setting: examining external factors affecting social service NGOs

“…Access to secured funding, the willingness of service users to participate in innovation, and the sustainability of the implemented services received the highest scores in the analysis, indicating that these factors are perceived by NGOs as very important to social innovation. These findings broadly align with previous studies, which identified that the availability of financial resources in the form of grants, donations, crowdfunding, and risk capital is a key enabler of social innovation (Haar and Ernst 2016;Zandniapour and Deterding 2017;Mulgan 2019).…”

“…In order to address social issues and improve the lives of service users, NGOs rely on various funding opportunities that come from public, private, and third sector organizations or individual and group donors. Over the years, funding schemes have been increasing internationally to provide financing and support to NGOs to test, implement, and scale their promising social innovations and increase their influence on society (Zandniapour and Deterding 2017). However, the reality is that NGOs are often dependent on temporary, single, or multiple limited funding sources, which can negatively affect the sustainability of innovation and the delivery of services on a larger scale.…”

Using Self-Assessments to Improve Board Performance and Build Nonprofit Capacity

“…During the last thirty years, nonprofit organizations have begun to recognize the value and importance of using different evaluation tools to improve their effectiveness and measure their performance, including: conducting needs assessments (Sankofa, 2021), using theories of change and logic models (DuBow & Litzler, 2019;Yampolskaya et al, 2004), tracking inputs, outputs, and outcomes, and other performance measures (Bagnoli & Megali, 2011;Lee & Clerkin, 2017;Lee & Nowell, 2015); and adopting managerial standards of practice or seeking accreditation (Eckerd & Moulton, 2011;Hao & Neely, 2019). Some nonprofit organizations have also begun to recognize the value and importance of using evidence-based practices, statistical modeling, and more rigorous evaluation designs to assess and measure their impact (Gordon & Heinrich, 2004;Schweigert, 2006;Weitzman et al, 2009;Zandniapour & Deterding, 2018).…”

Structuring Evaluation Partnerships: Exploring Contrasts in Researcher–Practitioner Roles and Responsibilities When Implementing Randomized Experiments in Real-World Settings

“…In a recent effort to promote evidence-based policy-making, several federal initiatives have required the use of external evaluators and rigorous evaluation methods to test the efficacy of innovative programs (Haskins & Margolis, 2014;Kappeler & Farb, 2014;Zandniapour & Deterding, 2018). These federal initiatives include the DOL Workforce Investment Fund, the HHS-TPP Program, the Administration for Children and Families Personal Responsibility Education Innovative Strategies Program, and the ED's Investing in Innovation and Education Innovation and Research programs.…”