Social Innovation Fund National Assessment Report

Posted by Corporation for National and Community Service on February 29, 2016

Just in time for the Social Innovation Fund (SIF)’s seventh birthday, we released the SIF Classic National Assessment report!

http://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/social-innovation-fund/knowledge-initiative/sif-classic-national-assessment

A key goal of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Classic program is to build the evaluation capacity of grantees and subgrantees so they can successfully assess whether their programs are truly creating impact.

To evaluate whether SIF Classic is achieving its goal the Office of Research and Evaluation and the SIF designed and oversaw the implementation of the national assessment.

The national assessment focused on SIF Classic grantees’ and subgrantees’:

• adoption of evidence-based grantmaking strategies;
• ability, and willingness to build the evidence base for the program models they support;
• scaling of program models;
• and use of collaborative approaches to address local community needs.

The study found promising evidence of improved organizational capacities among the SIF Classic grantees and subgrantees in almost all of these areas relative to a comparison group of similar organizations. SIF Classic grantees and subgrantees reported that the SIF Classic program was instrumental in bringing about these changes.