2016 GRANT COMPETITION – SIF OVERVIEW WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

nationalservice.gov/SIF

2016 Grant Competition – SIF Overview Webinar Transcript

This document is a transcript of a webinar covering the 2016 Social Innovation Fund Notice of Federal Funding 

Availability (NOFA). It has been very lightly edited for print, and is presented in a conversational, rather than a 

formal tone. For official guidance. Please see the NOFA.

Hello and welcome to the 2016 Social Innovation 

Fund Classic Grant Competition Overview 

presentation. 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.
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My intent today is to provide you with information on 

the SIF, to help you determine if this is the right 

opportunity for your organization. If it is, then I 

encourage you to participate in the webinar that will 

go into the details of the grant competition.

It’s important to note that in addition to participating 

in our webinars, you must read the NOFA and 

application instructions in order to have all the 

information necessary to submit a competitive grant 

application.

The Corporation for National and Community Service, 

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.

We are the national’s largest service and volunteering 

grantmaker and fund the AmeriCorps grant program, 

AmeriCorps VISTA and Senior Corps.
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The Social Innovation Fund was created in 2009 when 

the Corporation for National and Community Service 

was reauthorized with bipartisan support.

With the addition of the Social Innovation Fund, 

CNCS has expanded its traditional activities to include 

a focus on identifying and growing innovative, 

evidence-based approaches to our nation’s challenges.

Our purpose is simply stated on this slide: Using 

federal investment to attract private resources to grow 

the impact of effective solutions to community 

challenges in order to improve the lives of people 

living in low-income, under-resourced communities.

So why the Social Innovation Fund? These two 

quotations capture why the Social Innovation Fund 

and similar efforts are necessary.

There are many instances – across the country - of 

community challenges being effectively addressed. 

However, this isn’t happening at a large enough scale 

to solve the challenges.

There is a role for government to play in identifying 

and growing these effective approaches, rather than 

funding programs that either: A) Studies suggest are 

not effective, or B) Studies haven’t even been 

conducted to determine whether they are effective or 

not.

In a time of dwindling resources and increasing needs, 

it’s imperative that all funders (individuals, 

philanthropy, the corporate sector and government) 

focus our precious resources only on what we know is 

truly making a difference in people’s lives.
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The SIF has two distinct programs with the same 

overarching goal of mobilizing public and private 

resources to find and grow community solutions with 

evidence of strong results.

The SIF Classic Program, which we’ll be mostly 

speaking about today, funds experienced grantmakers 

to evaluate and grow innovative community-based 

solutions making an impact on low-income 

communities across the country.

The SIF Pay for Success Program, or PFS, 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.

SIF’s mission is simple and straightforward: To find 

what works, and make it work for more people.

Our purpose is to grow the impact of these effective 

solutions to community challenges to truly improve 

the lives of more people, with particular attention paid 

to those living in low-income, under-resourced 

communities.

Since our first grants in 2010, across both our 

programs, SIF Classic and SIF Pay for Success, we 

have awarded over $295 million in federal funding to 

43 organizations – our grantees. Our grantees and their 

subrecipients have leveraged those funds to generate 

nearly $600,000 in matching funds. These 

organizations are running effective programs serving 

over 625,000 people across the country who weren’t 

previously receiving those services.
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So now, to delve deeper into the SIF Classic approach, 

this slide depicts the different elements in our 

approach that utilizes: grantmakers, innovation, match, 

evidence, scale and knowledge sharing.

Experienced Grantmakers form the foundation of our 

approach. We select them competitively and rely on 

them to identify the innovative solutions and select the 

nonprofit organizations (referred to as subgrantees) 

that will implement those solutions.

The innovative solutions or the programs that the 

nonprofits implement must have documented evidence 

of effectiveness. This evidence falls along a continuum 

from preliminary to strong.

While part of the SIF, these programs are required to 

be rigorously evaluated to further assess effectiveness.

Both the Grantmakers and the subgrantees are required 

to match the funds they receive at a fairly high level –

for every dollar in federal funds they receive, both the 

Grantmakers, and the subgrantees have to raise $1 in 

non-federal funds.

While part of the SIF, these programs are scaled or 

grown to serve more individuals and have greater 

impact.

And finally, we’re committed to knowledge sharing. 

We’ll share the results of the evaluations and we’ll 

also disseminate what we are learning from the work 

of our intermediaries and subgrantees.
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We fund in three broad focus areas that I will describe 

in more detail: Youth Development, Economic 

Opportunity, and Healthy Futures.

So first, Youth Development, this covers activities 

ranging from cradle to young adulthood. A wide 

variety of activities which might include: reading 

proficiency, successful outcomes for children aging 

out of foster care, college enrollment and retention, 

improving outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile 

justice system, and employment just to name a few.
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Economic Opportunity also encompasses a range of 

activities that increase economic opportunities for the 

economically disadvantaged. As examples, current 

programming include: workforce development, 

financial education and counseling, housing, and 

social enterprises that engage the hard‐to‐employ.

And finally, Health Futures focuses on activities that 

improve health outcomes for people of all ages. 

Examples of current programming includes: 

supportive housing for the chronically homeless that 

reduces the cost to the public for their health care, 

reducing childhood obesity through physical activity 

and nutrition education, and integrated health care in 

rural areas.
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This slide lists a few of the necessary characteristics of 

a successful SIF grant and grantee.

The SIF has lofty goals and challenging requirements 

so it is critical that board and other leadership of your 

organization be committed at the application stage and 

remain involved throughout the program.

Flexibility and a willingness to change and adapt are 

important characteristics to deal with the unexpected. 

Strong fundraising expertise and capacity is imperative 

not just to meet your requirement but because you will 

need to support your subgrantees in their fundraising 

efforts as well. 

SIF intermediaries are experienced grantmakers but 

may not have run truly open competitions before so 

the ability to reach out beyond your existing networks 

is important. 

And you will need to develop strong capacity, using 

staff and/or consultants, in: Federal grants 

management; Oversight and management of 

subgrantees including the provision of training and 

technical assistance; and Evaluation - a benefit of our 

program, according to current intermediaries, is how 

one’s evaluation capacity is strengthened, but it takes 

an investment of time and resources.

This slide lists some of the things we’ve heard from 

current and past grantees about why the SIF made 

sense for their organization. Funding for a rigorous 

evaluation and technical assistance in implementing 

that evaluation is one of the key ones to highlight 

because while everyone understands the importance of 

evaluation, not everyone funds it.
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And finally, I’ll leave you with this Martin Luther 

King Jr quote because it captures a core belief of ours 

here at the SIF.

That is: that there is a fierce urgency of now because it 

is possible to be too late for children, youth and adults 

in challenging circumstances that can have long-term 

negative impacts on their lives and those of their 

families. If a child doesn’t learn to read by the 3rd 

grade when it is time to start reading to learn rather 

than learning to read, if youth involved in the justice 

system don’t receive the proper guidance and support, 

or if healthy habits aren’t learned, or if a parent can’t 

make a living wage to support her family, that is the 

fierce urgency of now with which we are all 

confronted.

Thank you.

This slide lists key documents and resources including 

the webpage where you can find all you need to learn 

more about this grant opportunity: 

http://www.nationalservice.gov/sif

I encourage you to go to this website to check out all 

the resources, including on evaluations, developing 

your financial system.
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And then finally, this is the information for how to 

reach us. SIFApplication@cns.gov or leave a 

voicemail at 202-606-3223 and we encourage you to 

sign up for updates on the Social Innovation Fund and 

this grant competition. Thank you.