Welcome to the Social Innovation Fund Pay For Success Administrative Data Pilot 

Grant Competition Overview. We appreciate your interest in the Social Innovation 

Fund, otherwise known as the SIF.

My name is Lois Nembhard and I am the Deputy Director of the Social Innovation 

Fund. I am joined by Mary Hyde, the Director of the Office of Research and 

Evaluation. 
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Our intent today is to provide an overview of the Social Innovation Fund and our Pay 

for Success program and then cover key points about the competition from the NOFA.

You will need to read the NOFA in its entirety, as well as the application instructions in 

order to have all the necessary information to develop and submit a competitive 

application.
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I’ll start by introducing the agency where the SIF resides.

• The Corporation for National and Community Service, or CNCS, is an independent 

federal agency, meaning that we are funded directly by Congress and don’t fall 

under one of the larger federal agencies.

• CNCS improves lives and strengthens communities through service and 

volunteering, and identifies and scales effective solutions to community challenges.

• CNCS funds AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, and engages more than five million 

Americans every year in service. CNCS is also the nation's largest grantmaker in 

support of service and volunteering.
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The Social Innovation Fund is one of CNCS’ newer programs and the only one not 

focused on service and volunteerism. The SIF was created in 2009 when the CNCS was 

reauthorized with bipartisan support, and awarded its first grants in 2010. This photo is of 

the bill, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, being signed into law.
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• With the addition of the SIF, CNCS expanded its traditional activities to include a 

focus on identifying and growing innovative, evidence-based approaches to our 

nation’s challenges.

• SIF’s mission is simple and straightforward: Find what works, and make it work 

for more people. 

• Since our first grants in 2010, SIF has awarded over $301 million in federal 

funding to 46 organizations – our grantees. Our grantees and their subrecipients have leveraged those funds to generate over $620 million in matching 

funds and through the expansion of their evidence-based programs, have 

improved the lives of more than 650,000 individuals. 
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• The SIF has two distinct programs with the same overarching goal – to 

mobilize public and private resources to find and grow community solutions 

with evidence of strong results.

• The SIF Classic Program funds experienced grantmakers to evaluate and 

grow innovative community-based solutions making an impact on lowincome communities across the country.

• The SIF Pay for Success (PFS) Program, which began in 2014, funds 

nonprofits and state and local governments to enable communities to pursue 

new models of financing social interventions that measurably improve the 

lives of low-income individuals.

• In its Congressional appropriations, SIF has been given authority to use up to 

20% of its funding for PFS programming.
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The SIF only funds programming that falls within its 3 focus areas: Youth 

Development, Economic Opportunity and Healthy Futures.

• Youth Development programs aim to prepare our children and youth for 

success in school, active citizenship, productive work, and healthy and safe lives. 

• Economic Opportunity programs increase economic opportunities and financial 

stability for economically disadvantaged individuals and families.

• Healthy Futures encompasses a range of activities that improve health outcomes, 

promote healthy lifestyles and decrease health disparities that disproportionately 

affect low income communities. 
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There are six key elements to the SIF approach, with slight variations between SIF 

Classic and SIF PFS. The descriptions I am about to provide are specific to SIF PFS.

• The first two are, Innovation and Evidence: The Program requires that all proposed 

interventions be innovative, defined as solving old problems in new ways that 

improve upon the approaches that had been tried. And we expect the 

interventions supported by our PFS projects to have evidence of their 

effectiveness.

• Next, Intermediaries: Rather than the federal government deciding which 

organizations should serve local communities and how they should do it, the SIF 

relies on our grantees to act as intermediaries. We competitively select grantees 

called “Recipients” with strong skills and track records of success to do the 

critical work of identifying promising solutions (interventions) to community 

problems. These Recipients then in turn select organizations called Subrecipients or Service Recipients – collectively called “Subs”, on a competitive 

basis, to validate and grow effective interventions. Sub-recipients receive funds. 
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Service recipients receive services.

• Fourth is Scale: The SIF funds Recipients to help implement and assess programs 

that aim to get results – like PFS transaction structuring – while simultaneously 

growing the impact and reach of service providers, leading to deeper or broader 

impact in communities. 

• Fifth, Match: The SIF requires that each federal dollar granted by the PFS 

Program be matched by Recipients 1:1 in non-federal cash (or up to 50% third 

party, in-kind contributions). 

• Sub-recipients must match 1:1 the funds they receive from Recipients; Up 

to 100% can be third party, in-kind. There is no match requirement for 

Service Recipients).

• Finally, Knowledge sharing: The SIF requires each Recipient to commit to 

knowledge sharing and other initiatives that advance understanding and more 

effective models in the social sector. To help disseminate this knowledge, the 

SIF’s Knowledge Initiative captures and shares the results and lessons learned 

from SIF investments.
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Now to the specifics of the Administrative Data Pilot.

• With this pilot, we are taking a step toward addressing a challenge identified 

by our grantees and subgrantees, as well as by other organizations – how to 

access high quality data for use in evaluations. 

• The data is being collected and exists, it’s just challenging for the average 

nonprofit to access.
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These are some of the barriers that have been identified.
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• Many nonprofits and researchers that are working on PFS projects do not have the 

capacity to invest in developing the necessary expertise. 

• Instead, they rely on other sources of data collection that are more costly in the long 

run and which may be of lower quality. 

• Centralizing the administrative data access function could mitigate these problems 

by allowing one entity to first develop, if necessary, and then deploy expertise to 

help governments and organizations working on PFS projects to access and use 

various forms of administrative data. 

• Eligible organizations who want to access the data to further the goals of their 

projects and improve their capacity could then take advantage of the central 

entity’s skill to access the administrative data applicable to their PFS project.
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I’ll now review some of the requirements of this project. Since it falls under our PFS 

Program, you will note that the requirements align with the key elements of the PFS 

Program that I described earlier.

• One to one match; Service Recipients are not required to match federal funds. 

• Open competition means that the opportunity is available to all eligible entities 

beyond the grantee’s own existing grant portfolio or network. 

o Once service recipients are selected, cooperative agreements must be 

established for services valued in annual amounts of at least $75,000 but 

not more than $400,000 and should be of sufficient size and scope to 

enable the Service Recipient to build its capacity to structure and enable 

High-Quality PFS projects through the use of administrative data by the 

end of the award. 

• A minimum of 80% of awarded federal funds must be directly invested in Service 

Recipients through Recipient services. 
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• All services provided by the Recipient(s) should result in deliverables, 

which the applicant must specify in its application. 

• These deliverables must contribute to the development of High-Quality 

PFS Projects. 
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This same organization could also facilitate contracts or MOUs for a different PFS 

project that seeks to use administrative data related to healthcare spending at local 

hospitals to track the cost of healthcare for individuals receiving and intervention 

that removes environmental health hazards from low-income housing. 
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• The NOFA details the selection criteria. This table shows the categories and how 

they are weighted. 

• As you develop your application, please ensure that you respond to all of the 

detailed points in the selection criteria. 
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• Thank you again for joining us today. 

• As a reminder, if you have additional questions, please contact us at 

PFSApplication@cns.gov, or call us at 202.606.3223. You can also sign up for SIF 

updates at the web address on your screen.