Center for Employment Opportunities just keeps getting that social innovation money
July 15, 2016 Category: Featured, Funding, ShortReducing recidivism rates is a hot-button issue across the country right now, and organizations getting the job done are raking in the moolah to continue doing so.
Regionally, a lot of that funding is being directed toward Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). With help from former GreenLight Fund Philadelphia Executive Director Matt Joyce, who’s now serving as CEO’s director of strategic partnerships, the national nonprofit has been cutting adult recidivism rates by approximately 22 percent in markets such as New York City and Philadelphia.
Both GreenLight Fund and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are on board with CEO, the latter selecting the nonprofit as one of two providers in its upcoming pay for success initiative.
Now, CEO has been selected to receive $230,000 from pay for success trailblazer Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), a nonprofit on the frontier of pay for success evaluation and funding. Those dollars are coming from the federal government’s Social Innovation Fund, used to invest in promising pay for success models. (According to GreenLight Fund Philadelphia Executive Director Omar Woodard, the national GreenLight Fund is also a recipient of Social Innovation Fund money.)
CEO is one of three nonprofits receiving funding from NFF in a $730,000 initiative to curb hunger, homelessness and unemployment via pay for success.
“Results-based approaches, like pay for success, challenge us to better understand the full costs of social change and incentivize measurable outcomes, instead of the status quo of reimbursing providers based on the volume of activities they undertake,” said NFF CEO Antony Bugg-Levine.
CEO’s goal? Serve up to 2,250 individuals considered to be at-risk for recidivism over the next five years, as well as expand from Philadelphia to new sites in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.