Federal Social Innovation Fund Celebrates $1 Billion Milestone

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As part of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) week, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency for volunteering and service, celebrated a major milestone for the SIF. Since the program’s inception in 2009, CNCS has generated $1 billion in investments for evidence-based community solutions in 46 states and Washington, D.C.  Private and local funders have nearly tripled the federal investment, providing $672 million to expand programs that work.

These investments have provided critical support to more than 490 nonprofit organizations across the country – helping grow effective programs and develop innovative approaches to some of the most pressing challenges in economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development. The SIF has grown into a social impact incubator within the federal government, creating public-private partnerships that deliver high-impact, community-based solutions that work.

With support from SIF:

• AIDS United helped remove barriers—such as lack of stable housing and transportation, mental health and substance abuse issues, and stigmas attached to HIV—between people with HIV and the treatment and prevention services that they need.
   
• The U.S. Soccer Foundation program looked at health and nutrition outcomes and produced valuable findings on the health gains for children from its soccer-based after-school activities.
   
• Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) is helping low-income individuals and families reduce asthma triggers in their households. GHHI is also exploring the use of SIF’s Pay For Success model to fund proven home-based asthma interventions, to reduce asthma-related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and ultimately, healthcare costs.
   
• Jobs for the Future/ National Fund for Workforce Solutions’ workforce model demonstrated statistically significant positive effects on the general employment rates of participants and were highly effective in improving focus industry employment, job retention, and earnings for Health Careers participants.

In 2014, CNCS reinforced its commitment to support innovative solutions that work through the creation of its Pay for Success (PFS) program. This $30-plus million grant-making initiative helps cities, states, and nonprofits develop PFS projects, which tie funding for social services to its true impact in the community.

Social Innovation Fund grantees used the week to reinforce the critical support SIF funding provides their organization. SIF grantees, LISC, United Way of Central Indiana, the Sorenson Impact Center at the University of Utah, United Way for Southeastern Michigan, Friends of the Children, the North Carolina Partnership for Children, and the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School all made announcements about the expansion of their programs.