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Policy Framework
The Social Innovation Fund (SIF), an initiative enacted under the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, targets millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions across three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support. This work seeks to create a catalog of proven approaches that can be replicated in communities across the country. Administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, SIF leverages a 3:1 private-public match, sets a high standard for evidence, empowers communities to identify and drive solutions, and creates an incentive for grantmaking organizations to more effectively target funding to promising programs. The SIF is part of the federal government's broader agenda to redefine how evidence, innovation, service, and public-private cooperation can be used to tackle urgent social challenges.
The Center for Economic Opportunity SIF project, led by the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) in collaboration with MDRC (hereafter referred to as the Mayor’s Fund SIF Collaborative), will replicate, improve, and continue testing five antipoverty programs that draw on strategies that have shown evidence of effectiveness in New York City and elsewhere. MDRC is also participating in a second SIF initiative with the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the Bridgespan Group.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The five programs collectively aim to achieve change across diverse cities and population groups on critical measures of economic opportunity, including education and vocational skills, employment outcomes, savings, and other measures of family well-being. Because building a national evidence base is a central goal of the federal SIF program, three of the five projects (Family Rewards, SaveUSA, and WorkAdvance) will undergo random assignment evaluations.
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The five programs the Mayor’s Fund Collaborative and its partners will develop and evaluate are:
- Jobs-Plus. The place-based Jobs-Plus program addresses entrenched poverty among public housing residents by saturating developments with job and career assistance, rent-based work incentives, and neighbor-to-neighbor support for work. In previous experimental pilots, residents’ earnings increased relative to a control group for at least seven years after the program’s full implementation, including at least three years after the end of program service delivery. The program will be implemented in public housing developments in New York City and San Antonio, TX.
- WorkAdvance. This sector-focused employment and advancement program combines strategies from several promising New York City programs and initiatives in other cities, building on evidence from recent evaluations by MDRC, Public/Private Ventures, and Westat. The program will be implemented in Tulsa, OK, New York City, and Northeast Ohio.
- Family Rewards. Inspired by the success of conditional cash transfer programs in a growing number of countries worldwide, NYC’s Family Rewards program will provide cash incentives to families for achieving milestones that lead to better health, education, and employment outcomes, while improving human capital. Building on preliminary results from an earlier demonstration in New York, the SIF-supported program will focus on the most promising incentives tested in that initiative, and offer families new kinds of guidance and support. The program will be implemented in Memphis, TN and New York City.
- Project Rise. Several CEO programs have successfully reengaged disconnected young adults by offering them paid internships, both as an incentive to continue their education and to prepare them for regular employment. The program will provide education-conditioned internships and support for disconnected 18- to 24-year-olds in Kansas City, MO, Newark, NJ, and New York City.
- SaveUSA. This asset development program offers a matched savings account to low-income tax filers, building on the savings opportunity presented by tax-time refunds, especially the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). A similar program piloted in New York City resulted in nearly 80 percent of participants saving for at least one year to receive the match and 70 percent continuing to save today. The program will be implemented in Newark, NJ, San Antonio, TX, Tulsa, OK, and New York City.
Subgrantees were chosen through a competitive selection process. City-specific selection committees, which include local stakeholders, the Mayor’s Fund, CEO, MDRC, and national experts, reviewed applicants’ alignment with specific program models, programmatic and organizational capacity, and commitment to rigorous evaluation. The providers selected for each program are:
- Jobs Plus: BronxWorks (New York City); San Antonio Housing Authority (San Antonio, TX).
- WorkAdvance: PerScholas (New York City); St. Nicks Alliance (New York City); Towards Employment, with Burdman Group (Cleveland & Youngstown, OH); Madison Strategies Group (Tulsa, OK).
- Family Rewards: Seedco, with BronxWorks and Children’s Aid Society (New York City); Seedco, with Porter-Leath and Urban Strategies Memphis HOPE (Memphis, TN);
- Project Rise: FEGS Health & Human Services (New York City); Henry Street Settlement (New York City); Kingsborough Community College (New York City); Rutgers University (Newark, NJ); Full Employment Council (Kansas City, MO); Catholic Charities of Kansas City – St. Joseph (Kansas City, MO).
- SaveUSA: Food Bank for New York City (New York City); Newark Now (Newark, NJ); United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County (San Antonio, TX); Community Action Project of Tulsa (Tulsa, OK).
What's Next
The five programs have been launched, and subgrantees will serve participants for up to four years. MDRC is monitoring and assessing program implementation and is providing technical assistance to subgrantees. In addition, teams are launching evaluation activities, including random assignment for three of the programs, baseline data collection, implementation field research, and planning for future survey data collection efforts.
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