Focus on Evidence: Social Innovation Fund Case Study

By Parita Patel

New book looks at history of evidence-based funding initiatives

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is a credible and consequential model for meeting unmet human needs in American communities. So says a new book providing a comprehensive history of the Obama Administration’s efforts to promote evidence-based social policy.

Written by Ron Haskins and Greg Margolis of the Brookings Institution, Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for Rigor and Results in Social Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2014) assesses the background and design of the SIF and five other federal evidence-based funding initiatives. The authors tell the story of the politics and policy debates that led to the programs’ creation, describe the programs’ designs and grantmaking processes, and consider their initial results and future potential.

In the book’s chapter on the SIF, readers will find a thorough and accessible recounting of the political and legislative history that led to the SIF’s creation in 2009. They will also discover the ways in which the SIF is uniquely positioned among its peer programs to promote positive and lasting social change in a time of shrinking budgets and increased public scrutiny.

“The Social Innovation Fund appeals to both sides of the aisle. It focuses both on what works in solving social problems and on saving taxpayer dollars.”–SIF Acting Director Melissa Bradley

Chief among these is the SIF’s pioneering use of intermediary grantmakers to identify high-impact community based organizations with innovative approaches to providing social services in low-income communities and investing public and private funds to help them grow to scale. By devolving decision-making and portfolio management to the intermediaries and requiring both grantees and subgrantees to match federal funds dollar-for-dollar, the SIF ensures that interventions are citizen-centered and can grow and take hold at the local level even after SIF funding ends.

In addition, as described by Haskins and Margolis, the SIF places a heavy emphasis on rigorous evaluations of program results. This not only improves accountability, but also builds a stronger marketplace of organizations with evidence of impact and builds the capacity of the nonprofit community to incorporate evaluation and evidence-based decision-making into program design and implementation.

By addressing social problems through public-private partnerships and results-oriented grantmaking, Haskins and Margolis note, the SIF is palatable to a broad swath of the political spectrum. The SIF has enjoyed bipartisan support beginning with the drafting of its enabling legislation in the Service America Act and through multiple appropriations rounds.

“The SIF appeals to both sides of the aisle,” said SIF Acting Director Melissa Bradley. “It focuses both on what works in solving social problems and on saving taxpayer dollars.”

Show Me the Evidence is the latest contribution to an emerging political and scholarly consensus that governments at all levels can and should “invest in what works” when it comes to creating and implementing policies and programs. Additional recent offerings in this vein include Moneyball for Government (Disruption Books, 2014), edited by former federal Office of Management and Budget directors Jim Nussle and Peter Orzag, and “Funding for Results: A Review of Government Outcomes-Based Programs” (PDF), a November 2014 report from the Beeck Center at Georgetown University. 

Haskins and Margolis praise the work President Obama and his appointees and agency staff have done to advance the work of evidence-based social policy through the SIF and the other federal evidence-based programs, but also ground it in a historical political and socioeconomic context and a related body of research and practice that predated the Obama Administration and will outlast it.

Evaluation results expected in the near future will tell if the SIF and the other programs live up to the high expectations set for them. But as Show Me the Evidence makes clear, in building on the previous work of others and enlisting the time, talents, and energy of thoughtful individuals and partners, Obama and his team have done much to position the federal government as a champion and enabler of social innovation and evidence-based governance for the long term.

“We’ve been ambitious about raising the bar on social innovation, evaluation, and results-based decision-making,” said Bradley. “Those are essential and sustainable approaches: they overcome mistrust, better target funding to where it can most effectively help people, and ensure wise stewardship of public resources.”

To write Show Me the Evidence, Haskins and Margolis interviewed 134 advocates and Congressional and federal agency staff and reviewed Congressional and agency documents and media reports. Haskins was a senior advisor for welfare policy to President George W. Bush and a Republican staff welfare counsel on the House Ways and Means Committee. Margolis is a senior research assistant who spent three years at the Brookings Institution studying evidence-based policymaking.

Show Me the Evidence is available in paperback and e-book forms from Amazon, Google Play, Barnes and Noble, and the Brookings Institution Press.