Assistance program
Social Innovation Fund
-$15.3 Million committed in FY2018–FY2021
- Agency
- Corporation for National and Community Service, CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 94.019
- What it does
- To grow the impact of innovative community-based solutions that have compelling evidence of improving the lives of people in low-income communities throughout the United States. Direct resources toward increasing the evidence-base-capacity and scale of the organizations SIF funds in order to improve the lives of people served by those organizations. AmeriCorps defines “social innovation†as the development of a potentially transformative practice or approach to meeting critical social needs. By investing in social innovation as a driver of results and accountability, the federal government will play a central role in accelerating the spread of promising solutions to address our most pressing national and local challenges. SIF awards are focused on improving measurable outcomes in the following priority areas: • Economic Opportunity – Increasing the economic opportunities and financial stability for economically disadvantaged individuals and families • Youth Development – Preparing America’s children and youth for success in school, active citizenship, productive work, and healthy and safe lives, including crime reduction initiatives focused on juvenile delinquency and victimization prevention and response • Healthy Futures – Improving health outcomes, promoting healthy lifestyles and decreasing health disparities that disproportionately affect low-income communities. SIF competitively selects experienced grant-making institutions (recipients) to do the critical work of identifying promising solutions to community problems and selecting high-performing nonprofit community organizations (subrecipients) on a competitive basis. To be awarded funding, intermediaries must demonstrate: •they have advanced beyond the beginning stages, are showing signs of effectiveness and have the potential for greater scale (larger programmatic and scaling dollars are awarded to programs that show higher levels of evidence and have the potential for greater impact); also must have at least preliminary evidence of effectiveness and then undergo rigorous, independent, formal evaluations •a track record of using rigorous evidence to select, invest in, and monitor the growth and progression of their grantees •expertise and demonstrated impact in the proposed issue area(s) of focus •depth and breadth of relationships with stakeholders in the issue area or region of focus. The SIF will also attract and leverage private donors to match federal dollars, bringing new resources to support promising organizations. The statute requires both the SIF intermediaries and their subgrantees to match their grants dollar-for-dollar, in cash, with non-federal funding.