Pathways To Opportunity

Section Body

Pathways To Opportunity Fi na l Re p ort of New Pro f it ’s Pat hways F und 201 0 - 201 6

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Pathways

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Table of Contents 4 Overview: The Pathways Fund 5 6 7 7 8 9

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Why Foster Opportunity and Access for Low-Income Youth About New Profit What is the Social Innovation Fund What is the Pathways Fund How Did It Work What Did We Achieve Together

11 Deep Dive: The Three Core Approaches of the Pathways Fund 11 12 16 19

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New Profit’s Focus Fund Approach Convenings: Building a Learning Community Evaluation: Raising the Evidence Level Collaboration: Pursuing Aligned Action

22 Conclusion: Impact on New Profit and Lessons Learned for the Field 23 24

»» Impact on New Profit »» Lessons Learned for the Field

25 Appendix: Profiles of the Six Pathways Organizations 26 27 28 29 30 31

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College Advising Corps College Summit iMentor Single Stop Year Up YouthBuild USA

This material is based upon work supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service under Social Innovation Grant No. 10SIHMA002. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, the Corporation or the Social Innovation Fund program.

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Pathways

Overview

Overview

Overview In 2010, New Profit was awarded a five-year $25 million federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant to launch the Pathways Fund. The mission of the Pathways Fund was to strengthen the bridge between education and workforce development in order to foster opportunity and access for low-income youth. As part of the SIF, the Pathways Fund provided financial and strategic support to help increase the reach and impact of six innovative nonprofit organizations working toward this collective mission.

There were three essential elements at the core of the Pathways Fund: building a learning community, primarily through convenings; increasing evidence through evaluation studies; and pursuing aligned action through collaborations. This report reflects on the key accomplishments and lessons learned in the Pathways Fund, focusing in particular on these three key aspects of the work.

After five years, the Pathways Fund has achieved remarkable success, infusing unprecedented capital into critical interventions, increasing the rigor and volume of data in the field, and serving as an example of an effective public/private partnership. Most importantly, the Pathways organizations increased their impact through both their direct work with youth and their efforts to change the systems that surround them. Across the network, the six organizations doubled the number of youth served, established new ways of collaborating to drive change, and shaped key policy decisions that will impact lives for years to come.

Additionally, through the individual and collective work of these six organizations, we learned critical lessons about what it takes to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.

The SIF represents an experiment in the federal government’s new way of doing business, and our experience demonstrated that there are both opportunities and challenges found in this approach. When an effort such as the Pathways Fund is managed thoughtfully - with feedback loops in place; a balance between a focus on results and innovation; and a nimble approach to collaboration - we learned that it is absolutely possible for a set of organizations to partner effectively with philanthropy and the federal government to drive lasting impact.

Why Foster Opportunity and Access for Low-Income Youth Entrepreneurship and innovation shaped America’s history and made this country a global leader in opportunity and economic mobility. However, America’s standing as a place of possibility is in grave danger. Successful employment in today’s workforce demands more formal education and training than ever before. Following the Great Recession, two-thirds of the workforce now have at least some postsecondary education.1 An education can offer crucial protections against a changing economy; over 95 percent of jobs created during the recovery have gone to workers with at least some college education, while those with a high school diploma or less are being left behind.2 The gap between the economic success and security afforded to those with and without a postsecondary education is significant and widening. While education remains the most direct pathway to economic self-sufficiency in our rapidly changing economy, access to the education needed for sustainable employment remains elusive for a 1 2

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, America’s Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots, June 2016.

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, America’s Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots, June 2016.

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Pathways

Overview critical mass of America’s youth, particularly those from low-income, underrepresented communities. Nearly fourteen percent of 16-24 year-olds in the United States, or 5.5 million young adults, are “Opportunity Youth” who are not attending school, not working, and have no credential beyond high school.3 Despite champions and successes in the field, significant opportunity and achievement gaps persist. Consequently, youth are struggling in unprecedented numbers to enter the workforce, while many adults are dealing with the challenge of retraining and re-engaging themselves in the changing economy. Only the wealthiest in this country have experienced a signifcant increase in college enrollment over the past four decades. For the vast majority in this country, college remains an elusive goal with many barriers to access and completion.

While there are proven innovations that can change the trajectory of young adults’ lives, these organizations currently operate within a fragmented social service and postsecondary education field. The nation’s current strategy for linking education and employment comprise a set of unaligned and segregated approaches that focus on isolated problems, rather than building effective integrated solutions-based systems. The disconnect between education and employment pipelines means that many young people fall through the gaps at crucial transition points, resulting in missed opportunities to leverage solutions that work.

Building pathways to and through college and into living wage employment is one of the most pressing issues facing the nation today.

Many proven programs working to improve these pathways to and through postsecondary education and into the workforce often struggle to grow to scale, remaining underfunded and out of reach for many who need them most. The Pathways Fund was created to support and increase the impact and footprint of such organizations by infusing them with much-needed financial and strategic support and creating the ecosystem around them to foster shared learning, collaboration, and systemic change.

About New Profit New Profit, a national venture philanthropy fund located in Boston, works to break down the barriers standing between people and opportunity in America. To do so, New Profit is working to transform the way America educates its children, propels people towards social and financial stability, and creates healthy communities.

Since its founding in 1998, New Profit has collaborated with philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, foundations, businesses, policy advocates, and other entities to help drive more than $1 billion towards innovative, disruptive approaches to social problem solving. New Profit’s unique, integrated approach brings together the following activites: investing through the New Profit Innovation Fund and Focus Funds; changing public policy through America Forward, New Profit’s non-partisan policy arm ; and building communities of learning and action around innovative new approaches to change through the Gathering of Leaders and other activities. www.newprofit.org

3

Tulane University Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, Reconnecting Opportunity Youth, March 2015.

Pathways 6

Section New Profit’s Focus Fund Approach

WHAT IS THE SOCIAL INNOVATION FUND?

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The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency that engages millions of Americans in service through its AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Volunteer Generation Fund programs, and leads the President’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. The SIF empowers organizations to identify and support sustainable solutions that are already making a significant impact in transforming communities. For more information, visit nationalservice.gov.

This material is based upon work supported by the Corporation of National and Community Service under Social Innovation Grant No. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, the Corporation of the Social Innovation Fund program.

WHAT IS THE PATHWAYS FUND? As an inaugural SIF grantee, New Profit was awarded a five-year, $25 million grant in 2010 to launch the Pathways Fund. The mission of the Pathways Fund is to strengthen the bridge between education and workforce development to foster opportunity and access for low-income youth.

Through a rigorous selection process, New Profit identified and welcomed six innovative, high-performing organizations into the Pathways portfolio based on their strong performance across key criteria: • Direct Impact: Data-driven track record, at least preliminary evidence of strong impact, and commitment to collecting data that drives program improvement and builds the evidence base of what works.

• Pathways Fund Fit & Value Add: Programmatic focus and growth strategy that aligns with the Pathways Fund objectives, and the desire for candid, collaborative relationships with New Profit and the other Pathways organizations.

• Social Entrepreneur: Ability to articulate a strong theory of change, attract high quality resources, and make tough choices that drive performance.

• Systemic Impact: Compelling and plausible strategy that leverages the direct program model to change the system driving the core problem.

• Organizational Capacity: Alignment across staff and board of directors around the organization’s mission, strategy, scale, and long-term sustainability, and track record of growth and healthy financial/grants management.

Pathways Fund Grantee Organizations

Each of the six organizations is focused on improving at least one of four primary education and employment outcomes for low-income young people:

• High School Diploma/Equivalency Attainment • College Enrollment

• College Persistence • Living Wage Employment

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Pathways

Overview

How Did It Work?

As the intermediary organization, New Profit’s key activities included: • Leveraged limited resources: Matched SIF funding on a 1:1 basis by raising $25 million from external funding partners. New Profit deployed $43 million of direct funding to organizations.

Individual organizations received $5.5M to $11.25 million over the five-year initiative.

• Strengthened and scale tested solutions: Provided hands-on, targeted technical assistance to the six Pathways organizations to support their programmatic impact, national scale, and long-term sustainability. This included significant strategic support from a dedicated New Profit “Deal Partner” as well as capacity-building support related to evaluation and grants management, two areas critical to the SIF. • Proved what works: Provided ongoing oversight and support on the design and implementation of rigorous outcome evaluation studies and development of in-house monitoring systems, through advisory support by New Profit’s Director of Evaluation.

• Maximized opportunities for collaboration: Created a learning community to foster systems change, through convenings and other mechanisms for sharing organization and field learnings. Created the conditions for formal and informal collaborations among the Pathways organizations through a range of approaches: sharing best practices, collaborating on trainings and workshops, encouraging co-location, building coalitions, exploring placebased collaborations, increasing collective visibility, etc.

• Demonstrated government’s role in innovation: Captured and shared knowledge from the Pathways Fund to demonstrate the vital importance of 1) partnering with government to solve the nation’s most intractable problems, and 2) investing in proven, evidence-based organizations.

As grantee organizations, each Pathways organization’s key activities included: • Mobilized private resources: Raised match funding from external funding partners on a 1:1 basis. Match funding raised totaled $43 million across six organizations.

• Built strong organizations: Worked with New Profit to strengthen internal capabilities in key functions (e.g., evaluation, finance, talent and leadership, board development and governance) to support stronger program delivery.

• Became proof point for field: Launched and implemented rigorous outcome study conducted by third-party evaluator to inform program design and delivery, as well as to provide a model for other organizations to increase their evidence base. Tracked and reported on key outcome metrics tied to unique program models, for program accountability and learning.

• Reached more young people: Served more young people within existing communities and expanded services to new communities in need.

• Advanced the field: Shared successes and lessons learned as part of the Pathways and broader New Profit network, and engaged in formal and informal collaborations.

• Drove policy change: Engaged in advocacy efforts in partnership with America Forward, New Profit’s non-partisan policy arm, with the goal of driving systems-level change.

Pathways 8

Overview

What Did We Achieve Together?

Infused unprecedented capital into critical interventions: Through the Pathways Fund, New Profit deployed $50 million of public and private capital and leveraged an additional $43 million raised by portfolio organizations, totaling an unprecedented infusion of ~$93 million of direct investments and services into the college access/success and workforce development fields.

Raised evidence level of field: Improving social sector programs requires knowing how and whether they work, yet too few organizations have a strong evidence orientation. Through the Pathways Fund, six of the country’s most promising social innovations engaged in customized third-party evaluations to build a strong evidence base. Final outcome studies include three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and four quasi-experiments, along with supplemental implementation research. Through these studies, which will be completed between 2016 and 2019, the Pathways Fund will add significantly to the volume of evidence in the college access/success field.

Improved efficacy of public/private partnerships: In part due to the work and success of the SIF, including New Profit and the Pathways organizations, the federal government has “built a new muscle” by investing in social innovations based on evidence of impact versus investment formulas or pre-existing relationships. One indication of this is SIF’s more recent investment in Pay for Success approaches.

ACHIEVED SIGNIFICANT COLLECTIVE IMPACT TO DATE

9,298

75,344

opportunity youth completed corporate internships in high growth industries

community college students accessed essential benefits

48,802

373

students successfully enrolled in college with help from a well-trained peer advisor

youth who were once out of school and unemployed enrolled in college

*Data Source: Pathways Fund quarterly performance reports; includes data from Pathways-funded sites only.

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Pathways

Overview Doubled number of young people served: Pathways funding and support helped the six organizations nearly double the number of collective beneficiaries served from 2010 - 2015.

Scaled to communities nationwide: Over the five-year initiative each organization grew to at least three new communities and/or grew significantly within existing communities. In 2015, the Pathways organizations were serving 35 communities across the nation directly through SIF funding.

College Advising Corps

Single Stop

College Summit

Year Up

iMentor

YouthBuild

Please note that this map only depicts sites that received direct Pathways funding, all six Pathways organizations have programs in communities not funded by Pathways that are not shown here.

Collaborated for greater efficiency and impact: Pathways organizations worked closely together in myriad ways; by the midpoint of the Pathways Fund, there were 25 collaborations between national offices across the Pathways network and over 40 collaborations between local sites. All six Pathways organizations indicated collaborations with at least two other Pathways organizations across their national offices.

Shaped key policy decisions: The six organizations were part of a collective effort to advance and successfully secure legislative wins in education and workforce development. All of the Pathways organizations were members of the America Forward Coalition, and active contributors to its Education, Workforce Development, and/or Pay For Success Task Forces. To date, America Forward has leveraged $1.5 billion for social innovation and has driven millions of federal resources toward programs that are achieving measurable results for those who need them most.

LEGISLATIVE WINS IN EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT Advocated for full funding of the

Secured $25M in

Social Innovation Fund

Pay for Success

totaling $340M+ to date

funding as part of Workforce Innovation Fund

Secured inclusion of a Pay for Performance amendment in the

Advocated for renewal of key education legislation, including

Workforce Innovation and Act Pathways Opportunity 10

Every Student Succeeds Act

resulting in ~$300M of federal resources for outcomes-driven programs

and the Higher Education Act

Deep Dive

Deep Dive: The Three Core Approaches of the Pathways Fund The Pathways Fund was New Profit’s first experiment with creating issue area funds, deemed “Focus Funds.” With the Pathways Fund, New Profit focused on: 1) building a learning community through convenings; 2) increasing the evidence base of the cohort through rigorous evaluation studies; and 3) pursuing aligned action through formal and informal collaboration strategies. The following sections include a deeper dive on each of these three core approaches of the Pathways Fund and a summary of what we learned along the way.

New Profit’s Focus Fund Approach In 2005, New Profit began to think in a more sophisticated way about the link between systems change and impact, realizing that direct growth is often not sufficient to create solutions at scale. New Profit shifted its focus to guiding and supporting social entrepreneurs in thinking about direct growth in the context of levers for systems change. As a result, New Profit added strategies to scale impact: advancing policy agendas that seek to transform government’s role in solving problems and convening social entrepreneurs with leaders from across sectors to spark new ideas, launch new initiatives, and forge new relationships.

These learning communities form the basis of New Profit’s current Focus Funds, which are intimate cross-sector collaboratives that aim to take advantage of powerful new areas of opportunity in social innovation.

11 Pathways

Convenings Building A Learning Community Pathways 12

Convenings Key to New Profit’s Focus Fund approach is creating a community of learning and action in which practitioners, funders, researchers, policymakers, and other thought leaders can engage in field building activities, collaborate and/or pursue aligned action strategies, and have a space to share, support, and learn from each other. The core Pathways Fund learning community included CEOs and senior staff from the six organizations and co-funders.

New Profit cultivated and supported this learning community primarily through regular convenings.

Pathways Fund Convenings The Pathways Fund began convening the core Pathways community in 2011 to launch the fund and start to build a learning community that could work together to advance their individual and collective work. The overarching goal was to provide practitioners and funders with the opportunity to work with each other and across the broader New Profit and SIF networks to problem-solve and think together about future opportunities in postsecondary education and workforce development.

At these two-day meetings held throughout the fiveyear initiative, organizations built relationships and exchanged ideas with their peers, heard from field leaders, and engaged in targeted workshops. The objectives for our time together evolved over time to meet the needs of the community.

OBJECTIVES EVOLUTION Early Years:

Later Years:

Building Community

Adaptive Support

In the early years of the fund, the Pathways community met three times annually to facilitate relationship building among the Pathways organizations. The deepened familiarity and sense of community that the Pathways convenings helped develop was foundational to the information sharing and collective problem-solving that the Pathways organizations engaged in throughout the fiveyear initiative. These early convenings also focused on common challenges throughout the Pathways network, including: launching rigorous evaluation studies, managing a federal grant, and developing the systems and talent needed to grow complex organizations.

In the second half of the initiative, recognizing that the Pathways organizations had successfully built strong and collaborative relationships with each other and had tackled many organizational development challenges common among growing organizations, New Profit focused more on providing support in targeted areas to meet organizations’ prioritized needs (e.g. strengthening financial sustainability, developing sophisticated measurement and evaluation systems), while still convening the learning community at least once annually to maintain cohesion throughout the network.

13 Pathways

Convenings

CONVENINGS TIMELINE FIELD BUILDING: DEFINING COMMON METRICS FOR THE FIELD | Worked with other college access/success organizations and funders to find a common language around measurement and begin to collectively define common metrics.

FIELD BUILDING: DEVELOPING A COLLECTIVE NARRATIVE | Discussed how to share key accomplishments and lessons learned in the Pathways Fund as a way to contribute to broader field-building efforts

2015 FIELD BUILDING: LAUNCHING A COLLEGE SUCCESS EFFORT | Joined with other field leaders to identify opportunities for innovation and collaboration throughout the college access/success field.

PRACTICE: ADOPTING CROSS-SECTOR STRATEGIES | Focused on how organizations could integrate best practices for working with complex learners in the populations they serve.

PRACTICE: ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT | Tackled internal challenges such as fundraising, measurement systems, and leadership and talent development.

COLLABORATION: ASSESSING STRATEGIES | Assessed and decided to strategically shift away from place-based collaborations and joint communications campaign.

COLLABORATION: OPERATIONALIZING STRATEGIES | Continued to build out place-based strategy and communications campaign.

NETWORK BUILDING: GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER | Inaugural Pathways convening focused on overall orientation and relationship-building among organizations.

2011 Pathways 14

NETWORK BUILDING: NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE SOCIAL INNOVATION FUND | Focused on the basics of managing a federal SIF grant, including evaluation, finance, and compliance.

PRACTICE: POINTS OF INTERSECTION IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION | Brainstormed how organizations might work together in ways that allow them to enhance their current programmatic offerings.

COLLABORATION: CRAFTING STRATEGIES | Highlighted emerging individual and joint place-based efforts at MDC.

COLLABORATION: BRAINSTORMING HOW WE MIGHT WORK TOGETHER | Launched a fund-wide communications effort and place-based approach to aligned action in partnership with Miami Dade College (MDC).

LESSONS LEARNED Convenings and Building a Community of Learning Through feedback from the Pathways organizations, New Profit identified some lessons learned around convenings for network-based initiatives and some best practices for how to maximize their value for participants.

LEVERAGE TALENT WITHIN NETWORK One of the most significant assets of a network-based initiative is the opportunity to build meaningful and strategic relationships with leaders and peers in the field. We found this to be particularly true for high-performing, leading organizations who each have deep and distinctive experiences and insights to share. Pathways organizations consistently valued time to learn from and about each other, and appreciated open, unfacilitated time to discuss challenges and successes with other organizations’ leaders. These unstructured interactions were particularly valuable for building a sense of community, increasing familiarity with other program models, and opening opportunities to discuss potential partnerships.

CUSTOMIZE PROGRAM TO ORGANIZATIONS’ SHIFTING PRIORITIES To maximize participants’ engagement and participation, the agenda should be built around the organizations’ expressed needs to ensure the relevancy of topics covered. One helpful guiding principal is that every session should 1) provide a product, skill, or idea that participants can easily share with their colleagues and apply to their organizations, and/or 2) provide access to individuals (funders, policymakers, field leaders) that it would be difficult for individual participants to access otherwise. New Profit surveyed the leaders of Pathways organizations ahead of each convening through surveys and/or calls to discuss priority areas they would be interested in discussing as a group. This process helped surface areas of convergence and also allowed the team to identify points of confusion or frustration.

SET CONCRETE GOALS AND ACTION STEPS In the early years of the fund, the time at Pathways convenings was well spent on community-building.

In subsequent years, organizations looked for additional purposes for these in-person meetings. In particular, organizations expressed a desire to work on activities with concrete goals and strategies with direct implications for their work, as opposed to general brainstorming and ideation sessions (for example, using convening time to help operationalize some of the collaboration ideas seeded during convenings). Additionally, organizations looked for concrete next steps to continue the work after the convening, as well as clear takeaways and accomplishments as a result of the convening.

15 Pathways

Evaluation Raising the Evidence Level Pathways 16

Evaluation One of the unique characteristics of the Pathways Fund is its focus on evaluation. As part of the Social Innovation Fund, the Pathways Fund included a mandate to engage in rigorous evaluation studies in line with the federal government’s commitment to promote evidence-based programming. This aspect of the fund was built into New Profit’s capacity building approach with the organizations and was also integral to the learning community.

Each of the Pathways organizations committed to undertaking rigorous evaluation studies to increase their evidence base and to build out their measurement capabilities. Once complete, these evaluation studies will have increased the rigor of evidence for all six organizations and changed the landscape of evidence in the college access/success field.

Pathways Fund Evaluation Studies

All Pathways organizations undertook individual third party evaluations, with New Profit providing critical oversight and technical assistance. Final outcome studies include three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and four quasi-experiments, along with supplemental implementation research. Due to the long-term nature of the studies, final results are expected starting late 2016 through 2019.

Funding: SIF funding enabled New Profit to invest heavily in evaluation: Pathways grants covered 25% to over 90% of each organization’s study, and collectively funded almost $3.5 million of evaluation work in the college access/success field.

Some of the organizations were also able to use their SIF-funded work to leverage other funding sources and jointly fund larger evaluation studies.

Portfolio Investment

Type of Evaluation

College Advising Corps

RCT & Quasi-Experimental

College Summit

Quasi-Experimental & Implementation

iMentor

Quasi-Experimental

Single Stop

Quasi-Experimental & Implementation

Year Up

RCT

YouthBuild USA

RCT & Comparative Descriptive

Outcomes • Increased level of evidence for Pathways organizations: Each organization will have increased their level of evidence through a third-party evaluation.

• Increased evaluation capacity for Pathways organizations: All organizations increased their internal monitoring and evaluation capacity; four of the six Pathways organizations created internal senior evaluation positions as a result of their participation in the Pathways Fund.

• Increased volume and quality of evidence in the college access/success field: Through the evaluation studies and supplemental research being conducted across the network, the Pathways Fund will add significantly to the volume of evidence regarding levers for impact in the college access/success field. Three of the largest organizations in the field are represented in this cohort.

To date, while there is selective evidence on certain program elements, large gaps in research prevent the field as a whole from understanding which levers drive positive change.

“We have learned a lot of the value and importance of evaluation such that it has changed who we are as an organization. We now build it in and embed it in everything we do. We were very naïve about it when this began and we now are not and I think we are a much stronger organization as a result.”

- Pathways Fund CEO Third-Party Evaluation Report 17 Pathways

LESSONS LEARNED Launching and Managing Rigorous Evaluation Studies Procuring an evaluator, designing the study, managing inevitable changes in timeline, scope, design or personnel these challenges and others mean evaluation studies need careful planning and active management to be successful.

New Profit has learned four key lessons from working with the Pathways organizations on their evaluations supported by the Social Innovation Fund.

TIMELINE Study timelines are long. For the Pathways organizations, they were almost certain to be longer than the five years allotted within the SIF grant, especially if the organization was not already primed to launch a rigorous study. Organizations that need to bolster their monitoring efforts or conduct formative research should plan for longer timelines, as do those that have long intervention or follow periods before effects can be determined.

READINESS Intermediaries and grantee organizations should engage in open and honest communication about the level of effort and expertise required to successfully manage a rigorous outcome study, and whether the organization is prepared to engage in this significant undertaking. Successful management of outcome studies not only requires upfront investment in procuring an evaluator and designing the study, but ongoing management of the usual changes in the course of evaluations (timeline changes, design/scope revisions, recruiting efforts, personnel changes). If intermediaries select organizations with weak or modest monitoring and evaluation capacity, they should be prepared to balance that with strengths/capacity that they or other partners can provide to the grantees.

FUNDING Raising funding for evaluations can pose a challenge for organizations. Without prior experience in evaluation, a common challenge that organizations face is inadequately budgeting and/or fundraising for evaluation.

Organizations that overestimate their capacity to raise evaluation dollars can be left struggling to complete their contracted work.

LEARNING Due to a push in recent years from funders, policymakers, and other stakeholders for the social sector to measure and show its impact, an increasing number of nonprofits are engaging in formal evaluation studies as a communications and fundraising tool to showcase program effects. While these are valuable, organizations struggle with how to also use their study results as a tool for internal learning and program improvement, versus a thumbs-up or -down assessment. Because there are often funding implications for organizations whose outcomes fall short of expectations, engaging in a rigorous evaluation can seem like a high-risk opportunity; organizations may be hesitant to conduct outcome studies unless they are already confident that their programs are producing positive outcomes. This cycle undermines the intent behind conducting evaluations, which is to further research and continuous learning. Funders have an important role to play in creating a safe environment that encourages organizations to engage in measurement and evaluation activities, and to partner with organizations to turn their evaluation findings into real program improvements.

Collaboration Pursuing Aligned Action 19 Pathways

Collaboration Key to New Profit’s focus fund strategy is determining the type of aligned action that a specific learning community will embrace. Aligned action refers to efforts to create an ecosystem that enables innovation and scale. Leaders, communities, and institutions work together to support ongoing innovation and scale of effective practices. Umbrella aligned action strategies include: 1) establishing cross-sector networks to support learning, innovation, and collaborations to strengthen the field; and 2) advancing systems-changing policy solutions.

Pathways Fund Collaboration The Pathways Fund represented New Profit’s first foray into field building within Focus Funds by creating a learning community and experimenting with aligned action with a cohort of organizations. Over the course of the initiative, New Profit’s approach to collaborations evolved as we learned more about how to best facilitate and support collaborations among the Pathways organizations.

The Pathways team worked to create the conditions for formal and informal collaboration among the six organizations through a range of approaches: sharing best practices, collaborating on trainings and workshops, encouraging co-location, building coalitions, exploring place-based collaboration opportunities, increasing collective identity and visibility, etc. Research for Action (RFA), New Profit’s third-party evaluator, noted that the Pathways organizations described how being part of the Pathways Fund enabled them to leverage program and practice knowledge from their peers to strengthen their own services to youth. Key results include: • By the midpoint of the Pathways Fund, there were 25 collaborations between national offices across the Pathways network and more than 40 collaborations between local sites. All six Pathways organizations indicated collaborations with at least two other organizations across their national offices, and the local sites surveyed reported collaborating with at least one site of another Pathways organization.

• While the number of collaborations across the network peaked in the third year of the initiative, the organizations continued to collaborate in the final years. Single Stop, Year Up, and YouthBuild USA, in particular, collaborated in a number of ways.

• Most of the relationships at the national level were informal, although some formal partnerships developed between the organizations as well. For example, Pathways organizations formally partnered with each other to develop a national collective leadership plan on college access, submit a joint funding proposal, establish an MOU for services, and jointly pursue other collaborative efforts.

Map of Pathways Collaboration Case Studies:

Pathways 20

•

College Advising Corps and YouthBuild USA partnered to lift the voices of first generation college students. Youth Build USA added two College Advising Corps alumni to their National Council of Youth Leaders. NCYL is a diverse body of young leaders from across the country who advise policymakers and funders on issues affecting low-income youth and their communities.

•

YouthBuild USA sought peer advice from iMentor regarding MyBestBets, its career exploration and postsecondary planning platform. The two organizations shared best practices related to the effective use of technology platforms.

LESSONS LEARNED Fostering and Supporting Collaborations It takes time to build a learning community and establish trust, and then for organizations to figure out where their goals align. Additionally, organizational goals are dynamic and can shift significantly over a few years; high impact collaborations in the initial years of an initiative may look different from those in later years. This means supporting collaborations must be an ongoing practice for an intermediary. Throughout the five-year Pathways Fund, New Profit experimented with different approaches to fostering and supporting collaborations throughout the community.

Following are key lessons learned.

FOSTERING COLLABORATIONS: IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIC PARTNERSHIPS We learned that it can be more effective to foster organic collaborations rather than funder-driven partnerships among the organizations. Early on, New Profit explored the possibility of establishing a place-based collaboration between the six Pathways organizations and Miami Dade College. After careful exploration, we discovered that, given the different program models and priorities among the six Pathways organizations, a centrally driven, network-wide collaboration was not the best way. We pivoted to encouraging organic development of co-locations and collaborations where they naturally emerged in the Pathways portfolio, to great success. Driven by each organization’s strategic priorities, organic collaborations emerged and focused on improvements or growth in one or more of the following areas: 1) improved program quality via shared training, 2) increased efficiency via shared infrastructure, 3) stronger entry into priority markets leveraging the Pathways network, and 4) expanded beneficiary reach via joint recruitment and shared marketing efforts.

Notably, because organizations were not selected into the Pathways portfolio with mission and program alignment as an explicit goal, opportunities for collaborations that achieve common goals were more limited.

Initiatives that select grantee organizations based in part on their ability to partner with each other may take a different approach to support collaborations.

SUPPORTING COLLABORATIONS: MORE TO LEARN Although New Profit has been effective in helping to cultivate collaborations among Pathways Fund organizations, we have more to learn about how to support organizations in operationalizing collaborations beyond the initial relationship-building stage. Organizations expressed a desire for New Profit to help identify concrete ways to activate, operationalize, sustain, and/or scale strategic partnerships. Supports should include clear goals and strategies outside of relationship building during convenings.

Conclusion

Conclusion

Impact on New Profit As New Profit’s first Focus Fund and public-private partnership, learnings from the Pathways Fund have significantly influenced New Profit’s current structure and strategy.

• Sparked Evolution of Model to Focus Funds: Through Pathways, New Profit saw the potential of supporting a cohort of organizations working in the same field and developing a learning community to deepen organizations’ direct impact; drive systemic impact through aligned action, policy, and other approaches; and increase opportunities for co-funder engagement.

Issue-driven funds are now core to New Profit’s strategy and operating model.

• Proved Value of Feedback Loops: Having real-time access to feedback from organizations and co-funders, primarily through the Pathways Fund’s third-party evaluator, Research for Action (RFA), allowed the Pathways team to be nimble in response to the changing needs of the network. For example, in direct response to feedback we received, we decided to move away from our funder-directed collaboration strategy and instead foster organic collaborations.

We also evolved our learning community approach to focus less on convenings and more on customized technical assistance.

• Drove Integration of Evaluation Support in Portfolio Services: New Profit’s participation in the SIF and the movement toward increased evidence in the social sector has influenced our thinking not only about the importance of evaluation for our organizations, but also about the value of internal evaluation expertise and how to best support organizations in measuring impact while growing and remaining innovative.

• Demonstrated Importance of Fundraising in Early Years: Once Pathways reached the midpoint of the five-year fund, it became harder to fundraise, due to funder fatigue despite (or sometimes due to) positive results. We now know that funds should strive to raise the majority of funding needed over the life of a fund in the earliest years, preferably through multi-year funding streams.

23 Pathways

Conclusion

Lessons Learned for the Field The Social Innovation Fund was built on the idea that by lifting up the most promising innovations in the social sector, building their evidence base, and igniting widespread change through mobilizing cross-sector resources and collaborations, we can tackle some of this country’s most entrenched social problems. The significant accomplishments of the Pathways Fund have demonstrated the opportunity philanthropy has to make significant change happen through a different way of doing business. This may be through public/private partnerships like the SIF, or through other funder collaboratives or private initiatives that embrace a holistic view of what it takes to drive real change, or through alternative funding mechanisms such as Pay for Success. Likely, transformative change will come through a combination of the best of what philanthropy has to offer today. Regardless, the funding community needs to recognize that the field is evolving, and should direct and adapt their support accordingly.

Key lessons from this five-year Pathways Fund initiative shed light on this evolution: • Forced Feedback Mechanisms: We see the importance of putting processes in place for funders to receive regular, real-time feedback and progress updates from their grantees in order to better tailor their support to organizations and document what works. Organizational needs and priorities can shift significantly over the course of a five-year initiative, and having feedback directly built into the infrastructure allows funders to be more responsive.

• Fostering Organic Collaboration: It takes time to build a learning community, establish trust, and then identify where individual organizations’ goals align. It can be more effective to foster organic collaborations driven by organizations’ priorities rather than funder-driven partnerships.

• Innovation vs. Evaluation: Given increased focus on evidence in recent years, there is a tension between supporting innovation through rapid feedback loops while also requiring rigorous evaluation studies. In an effort like the SIF, organizations must maintain a consistent program model in order for evaluation studies to accurately measure effects over time, while also continuing to improve and be innovative. This may necessitate encouraging organizations to build in their own feedback loops to facilitate adaptability while balancing the need for stability and program fidelity.

• Launching and Managing a Rigorous Evaluation Study: Procuring an evaluator, designing the study, and managing inevitable changes along the way means that study timelines are certain to be longer than a typical funding cycle. Funders need to do a better job of setting up organizations well to plan for and manage rigorous evaluation studies, from both a funding and capacity standpoint.

• Taking the Long View: We have witnessed how long it takes for philanthropy to support sustainable change. New Profit has always provided multi-year grants, and has generally provided unrestricted growth capital funding. The SIF’s longer grantmaking cycle (five years) allowed New Profit to attract a new set of funding partners and provide consistent support long-term to organizations. At the same time, while the SIF has enabled innovative funders like New Profit to take the longer view, it can be challenging to motivate many private funders to remain committed through to the end of a longer grant period.

Pathways 24

Appendix: Organization Spotlights 25 Pathways

Organization Spotlights

College Advising Corps Key Outcomes •

Students Served: In 2015-2016, 532 CAC advisers served 159,300 high school students.

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Communities Served: CAC serves high school students in need nationwide - in the 2015-2016 school year, CAC advisers were placed in 531 high schools in 14 states, through 24 different university partnerships.

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CAC students are 30% more likely to apply to college/university.

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CAC students, who come primarily from low-income backgrounds, persist to their second year of college at a rate of 74%, 2% higher than the national average of 72% and 7% higher than the 67% average for low-income students.

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Compared to seniors who have not met with the CAC adviser, students who have met with the adviser at their school are:

Nicole Hurd CEO College Advising Corps (CAC) works to increase the number of lowincome, first generation college, and underrepresented high school students who enter and complete college. To deliver on this mission, CAC hires, trains, and places recent college graduates to serve as fulltime college advisers in underserved high schools where they help students and their families navigate the college admissions and financial aid process.

FY15 EXPENSES: $9.6M ‘15-’16 LIVES TOUCHED: 159,300 HEADQUARTERS:

30% more likely to apply to a college/university, 18% more likely to apply to three or more institutions, 6% more likely to apply to six or more institutions

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23% more likely to be accepted to college

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24% more likely to be accepted to a four-year college

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27% more likely to submit a FAFSA

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22% more likely to have heard of Pell Grants

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17% more likely to take the ACT

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16% more likely to take the SAT

Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative) •

Organizational Structure: In 2013, CAC successfully transitioned to become its own independent 501c3, spinning out of the University of North Carolina. This change enhanced the organization’s ability to realize its potential for scale and impact. With New Profit support, CAC successfully built a set of operating principles, processes, and functions from the ground up, as well as a team with dedicated program, development, finance, HR, and evaluation staff.

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Board of Directors: As an independent organization, CAC developed a strong, engaged inaugural board of directors, including Peter Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg LP; Erskine Bowles, former University of North Carolina system president; and Joaquin Castro, U.S. Representative from Texas.

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Scale: CAC grew its footprint significantly; in the 2014-15 academic year, the organization added 81 new “near peer” advisers - a 22% increase from the prior year.

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Evaluation: Through the SIF grant and with coaching from New Profit’s Director of Evaluation, CAC engaged in a randomized controlled trial and quasi-experimental study, which will significantly raise the organization’s level of evidence. Additionally, the organization expanded its internal measurement and evaluation capacity, including hiring a Director of Evaluation.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Pathways 26

»»

Organization Spotlights

College Summit Key Outcomes •

Students Served: In the 2016-2017 school year, College Summit programming will touch the lives of up to 100,000 students across the country.

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Communities Served: In the 2016-2017 school year, College Summit has partnerships with 100 high schools, representing 22 districts across 12 states.

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College Summit’s partner schools show an average 20% increase in school-wide College Enrollment Rates (CER) over baseline.

Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative) •

Peer Leadership: College Summit was the first college access organization to unleash the power of peer influence to create a college going culture in America’s high schools. The program trains and supports teams of high school juniors and seniors, or Peer Leaders, who run campaigns that guide their peers through the college application process, and equips them with the tools to succeed once enrolled.

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Policy: College Summit has been a key driver of the national dialogue around high school accountability and transparency, and helped craft the language that requires each state to report the graduation rates and college enrollment rates of each high school, now reflected in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2016.

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Model Evolution: In 2016, College Summit launched PeerForward, a more targeted program and operating model that scales the Peer Leader model to reach 1.8 million students from low-income communities over the next decade.

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Evaluation: Through the SIF grant and with coaching from New Profit’s Director of Evaluation, College Summit has engaged in rigorous quasi-experimental and implementation studies of impact metrics and outcomes, in an effort to significantly raise the program’s level of evidence.

Keith Frome CEO College Summit is a national nonprofit that unleashes the power of peer influence to transform the lives of young people from lowincome communities across the country. To date, College Summit has served over 250,000 students from 500 partner high schools across the country, and aims to serve 1.8 million students on their path to college and career over the next decade.

FY15 EXPENSES: $14.4M FY15 LIVES TOUCHED: 100,000 HEADQUARTERS: Washington, D.C.

27 Pathways

iMentor Key Outcomes •

Mike O’Brien CEO iMentor is a national organization that builds mentoring relationships which empower first-generation college students from low-income communities to graduate high school, succeed in college, and achieve their ambitions. Through our school-based program, they match every student in their partner public high schools with a collegeeducated mentor for a minimum of 3 years. iMentor provides the structure and support necessary for these relationships to be successful, including a rigorous college success curriculum and data-driven case management from iMentor staff.

Since 1999, iMentor has matched more than 20,000 students with mentors.

•

Pathways 28

Students Served: iMentor served 5,650 students in 2015 through its NYC and nonprofit partnerships, almost 1.5x the number of students served at the start of Pathways.

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Communities Served: Over the 5-year initiative, iMentor successfully expanded into new communities across the country through its partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and through its first direct replication sites. In 2015, they partnered with 39 public high schools.

Impacted Students’ Lives »»

College Enrollment: 65% of iMentor students enrolled in college on-time as compared to the national average, which is 52% for students from low-income communities.

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College Persistence: 76% of iMentor students persist to the third semester of college compared to the national average, which is 69% for students from all demographics.

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College Completion: 65% of iMentor students enrolled in college on-time as compared to the national average, which is 52% for students from low-income communities.

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Model: Through Theory of Change work with New Profit, iMentor refined its model from being a broad-based mentorship program to focusing on college success with long-term mentoring relationships as its primary program lever for achieving student outcomes.

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Strategy: iMentor revised its scale strategy to include both replication of direct service regions and expansion through a partnership model that empowers nonprofit partners (e.g., Big Brothers Big Sisters) to run the iMentor model in their local communities. These partner programs, now operating in 16 communities across the country, are cost-effective, have high-quality outcomes, and are highly scalable. iMentor has also launched two regional offices in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Evaluation: iMentor is undergoing a rigorous quasi-experimental evaluation study, expected to continue to 2018, which will increase the level of evidence for the iMentor program. They also built up their internal evaluation capacity, including hiring a Managing Director of Research and Evaluation, who leads a team of analysts in leveraging data for program learning and improvement.

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Collaborations: iMentor formally and/or informally collaborated with each of the other five Pathways organizations over the five-year initiative, e.g. iMentor and YouthBuild USA shared best practices related to the effective use of technology platforms, and iMentor provided peer advice to YouthBuild USA on its online career and postsecondary planning platform.

FY15 LIVES TOUCHED: 5,650

New York, New York

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Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative)

FY15 EXPENSES: $13.9M

HEADQUARTERS:

Grew Lives Touched

Organization Spotlights

Single Stop Key Outcomes •

Students Served: In 2015, Single Stop served 215,919 households through its local community partners, and 41,760 students through its community college sites.

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Communities Served: In 2015, Single Stop served communities across nine states.

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In 2015, Single Stop provided a total of $525M worth of benefits and services to households (average $2,892 per household), and a total of $68.8M worth of benefits to community college students (average: $1,705 per student).

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An independent study showed that students at CUNY who were Single Stop clients had a 32% higher retention rate than similar students who were not Single Stop clients.

Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative) •

Strategy: Building off of its proven service model, Single Stop is developing a web-based tool and an app -- an “Amazon.com” for social services -- to significantly scale Single Stop’s one-stop approach to providing access to existing benefits.

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Regional Expansion: In 2011, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation awarded Single Stop a grant from a fund created with BP oil spill money, which allowed Single Stop to open an office at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. Building on its success, Single Stop has since opened a Baton Rouge office as headquarters for its Gulf Coast region, and has expanded its programs along the Gulf Coast, including Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida.

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Evaluation: Through the SIF grant and with coaching from New Profit’s Director of Evaluation, Single Stop engaged in rigorous quasiexperimental and implementation studies of Single Stop outcomes, which will significantly raise the organization’s level of evidence.

Christy Reeves CEO Partnering with local community organizations, veterans organizations, and community colleges, Single Stop provides benefits counseling, free tax preparation, legal assistance and financial counseling to low-income individuals and families. Single Stop’s community college sites help to address some of the non-academic challenges that prevent students in community colleges from completing their degrees.

FY15 EXPENSES: $26.9M FY15 LIVES TOUCHED: 41,760 HEADQUARTERS: New York, New York

29 Pathways

Organization Spotlights

Year Up Key Outcomes

Gerald Chertavian Founder & CEO Year Up is a one-year intensive training program that empowers motivated young adults ages 1824 to reach their full potential through professional careers and higher education. The program utilizes a high expectation, high support model and provides young adults with a unique combination of hands-on technical and professional skills, corporate internships, and coursework eligible for college credits.

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Students Served: Year Up served more than 2,500 students in 2015 and will serve more than 3,000 in 2016. To date, Year Up has served 14,000+ students.

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Communities Served: Year Up currently serves students in 18 U.S. cities nationwide.

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100% of qualified Year Up students are successfully placed into internships.

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85% of Year Up graduates are employed or enrolled in postsecondary education within four months of completing the program.

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Employed Year Up graduates earn an average starting wage of $18 per hour.

Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative) •

Theory of Change: With New Profit’s coaching, Year Up broadened its orientation from exclusively growing its direct model to identifying systemic impact opportunities. This led Year Up to focus on partnering with community colleges as a scaling strategy, as well as to its focus on placing a critical mass of Year Up interns with target corporate partners to better demonstrate the students’ significant value to companies.

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Systemic Impact: In collaboration with America Forward, Year Up actively engaged in advocacy work, and was a key influencer in the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act. Additionally, Year Up leveraged the Pathways and New Profit networks to build meaningful connections to other field leaders, which have helped advance the organization’s systemic impact work.

For example, through their relationship with Single Stop, another Pathways grantee, Year Up partnered with Miami Dade College, the second largest U.S. post-secondary institution.

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Evaluation: Year Up leveraged their SIF grant to secure additional federal funding to conduct a rigorous randomized controlled trial of Year Up’s impact. Additionally, they have significantly expanded their internal capacity for measurement and evaluation, and are among the most sophisticated nonprofits in this area.

FY15 EXPENSES: $87.9M FY15 LIVES TOUCHED: 2,500 HEADQUARTERS: Boston, Massachusetts

Pathways 30

Organization Spotlights

YouthBuild USA Key Outcomes •

Students Served: In 2014-2015, YouthBuild USA served 9,000 opportunity youth, including 1,105 through their post-secondary education (PSE) programs.

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Communities Served: In 2014, YouthBuild USA had 264 local sites across 46 states, including 24 PSE sites.

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77% of all YouthBuild USA enrollees obtain their high school equivalency credentials, high school diplomas, and/or industryrecognized credentials.

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61% of all YouthBuild USA enrollees go on to postsecondary education or a living wage job.

Dorothy Stoneman Founder

Key Organizational Activities & Milestones (over 5-year SIF Initiative) •

Program Innovation: Recognizing that a high school degree or high school equivalency often proves insufficient to obtain successful employment, YouthBuild USA’s PSE model extends the core YouthBuild USA program to help opportunity youth apply, enroll, and persist in two or four year colleges or other postsecondary training programs. Given the positive outcomes of this strategy, YouthBuild USA has successfully expanded its PSE initiative, growing from seven pilot sites in 2011 to 24 sites in 2014.

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Strategy: In 2015, YouthBuild USA completed a strategy engagement with Deloitte Consulting and New Profit that helped the leadership team clarify the cost structure of the current strategy and potential growth paths.

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Leadership Transition: YouthBuild USA built a national leadership team that is strong and focused. In 2014, Sangeeta Tyagi, Chief Program Officer, transitioned into a new President role representing a critical step towards succession planning. In 2016, Dorothy Stoneman announced she will step down after 38 years as CEO - a testament to her confidence in the strength of the leadership team and board.

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Evaluation: In line with the SIF evaluation requirements, YouthBuild USA engaged in two rigorous evaluation efforts: 1) an evolution of the YouthBuild USA program’s impact on participants, conducted as part of a broader randomized control trial of YouthBuild USA’s Department of Labor (DOL) and AmeriCorps-funded programs, and 2) a multiyear implementation study of the PSE model. As part of a shared research agenda, these studies are supported by SIF and New Profit, in coordination with the DOL, other key funders, and YouthBuild’s third party evaluators.

John Valverde CEO

Sangeeta Tyagi President In YouthBuild Programs, opportunity youth work full-time for 6-24 months towards their High School Equivalency or high school diplomas while learning job skills, primarily by building affordable housing in their communities; emphasis is placed on leadership development and civic engagement.

YouthBuild’s postsecondary education initiative (PSE) provides additional orientation and support for students transitioning to and through college, including college awareness and planning activities, college counseling, application and financial aid assistance.

FY15 EXPENSES: $25.6M ‘14-’15 LIVES TOUCHED: 9,000 HEADQUARTERS: Somerville, Massachusetts 31 Pathways