Social Innovation Fund 2016 Pay for Success Grant Competition

Grants to USA local and State agencies, nonprofits, and IHEs for innovative solutions that have the potential to improve the lives of low-income communities nationwide. January 13 is the deadline to submit an LOI (optional). On January 6 and January 11 overview webinars (optional) will be held.

On January 26 a Question and Answer webinar (optional) will be held.

Pay for Success (PFS) is an innovative model that ties funding for an intervention to its impact in the community. PFS offers a way to catalyze philanthropic and private sector investments to deliver better outcomes, enabling government or other Payors (for example, school districts or hospitals) to pay only for outcomes achieved – that is, to pay only for what works. PFS increases investments in effective social interventions by changing the way government allocates and invests its resources.

The SIF PFS Competition aims to advance and develop emerging models that direct resources toward interventions that produce measurable outcomes. By providing capacity building assistance and funds to support the structuring and enabling of PFS Projects, this competition aims to:

• Increase the ability of service providers and government entities to generate, analyze, and manage data to improve outcomes across diverse issue areas and geographies.
• Increase the number of High-Quality PFS projects (as defined in Appendix III of this Notice) occurring through partnerships between state and local governments and nonprofit organizations.

Ultimately, efforts are intended to:

• Increase knowledge in the social sector about which capacity building and PFS Project-structuring practices increase the likelihood of successful implementation of PFS Projects as well as other evidence-based approaches and related social financing mechanisms.
• Accelerate the development of the field to make it easier to adopt outcomes-focused funding models.
• Attract capital to finance effective solutions to challenges facing low-income communities nationwide and to high-performing organizations that demonstrate the ability to strengthen, grow, and sustain effective solutions for challenges facing low-income communities.

Funding will be provided for Transaction Structuring activities in order to move High-Quality PFS projects from the developmental stage to the implementation stage. Specifically, CNCS will award funds to Recipients to support Subrecipient and Service Recipient activities that structure and enable PFS Projects. These activities may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Provide overall PFS Project coordination and support
• Raise capital and develop capital structure
• Mediate and facilitate agreement between each of the parties to the PFS Project
• Close the PFS Project and prepare for post-closing activities
• Prepare outcome monitoring and data collection, outcome payment scheduling, and delivery of the intervention. This may include activities that require funding for costs related to closing the PFS Project.
• Support “ramp-up” activities

Applicants may propose additional or alternative strategies that further the purposes of the SIF PFS Competition.