With the strain on both public and private resources in the wake of the Great Recession, funders started asking: “How do I know my investments are actually making a difference?” The Obama Administration’s answer to this question is what’s called “tiered-evidence programs,” and they’ve already been applied at the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services.

Tiered-evidence programs take the approach that there is a continuum of evidence, ranging from preliminary to strong, and that programs move along this continuum by conducting more and increasingly rigorous program evaluations – moving from tier to tier as they amass evidence.

The Social Innovation Fund, one of the first of these tiered evidence initiatives, is committed to investing in evidence and evaluation that helps prove and improve promising models. In order to help organizations map their way forward, we have created the Social Innovation Fund Evaluation Plan Guidance – a new document that presents a comprehensive evaluation design. The evaluation is based on Social Innovation Fund definitions and expectations, but it could be applied to a variety of organizations and programs. It’s part of the Social Innovation Fund’s “Knowledge Initiative,” which shares best practices to benefit and strengthen the sector as a whole.

The Social Innovation Fund, one of the first of these tiered evidence initiatives, is committed to investing in evidence and evaluation that helps prove and improve promising models.

 

More Evidence = More Funding

The Social Innovation Fund groups evidence levels into three categories or tiers: preliminary, moderate and strong. For all evidence-focused federal programs, the higher you are on the continuum of evidence, the more ready you are for scale and the more funding you can receive.  

This model aims to:

• Infuse evidence in programming and grantmaking decisions
• Advance the evidence base of all funded programs
• Increase the number of interventions on the upper end of the evidence continuum
• Improve program models by applying data and outcomes analysis in real time

A Blueprint for Rigorous Evaluations

Although this document was developed to help the Social Innovation Fund grantees and subgrantees meet program expectations, it can serve as a blueprint for a variety of evaluation plans used by funders, nonprofits, and evaluators. It provides a common framework and shared understanding of what rigorous evaluation means, the elements and criteria against which plans will be assessed and approved, how implementation will be monitored, and how results will be reported and shared.

Gabriel Rhoads, Director of Evaluation and Learning at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York stated:

“Through our past work at EMCF, we’ve realized the importance of aligning evaluation planning with program growth. It helps ensure appropriate budgeting, and also that a program is increasing the number of youth served in a way that will meet an evaluation’s sample size requirements. The Social Innovation Fund evaluation plan process supports this alignment well. In fact, EMCF has incorporated parts of the Social Innovation Fund evaluation planning template into our evaluation efforts with grantees in our non-Social Innovation Fund portfolios.”

Michael D. Smith is Director of the Social Innovation Fund, a White House initiative and program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, created to grow effective community solutions. Michael was most recently Senior Vice President of Social Innovation at the Case Foundation.