Philly’s Department of Human Services is going to start tracking contractor outcomes

There are consequences for a company that fails to do right by its shareholders, just as there are consequences for nonprofits that fail to meet grant goals. Taxpayers, on the other hand, don’t always have the resources to hold government accountable for how public dollars are spent.

Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services (DHS) just made a move toward establishing that level of accountability. According to the Daily News, DHS will start using scorecards to track the performance of the seven primary contractors working in the child welfare system.

Metrics will include the organization’s financial health, community engagement and “how quickly children are reunited with their parents or placed in adoptive homes,” the Daily News reports. (It’s worth noting that Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown is pushing DHS to measure organizational diversity.)

Scorecards for the first quarter will be published by October. If outcome expectations aren’t met or improved by a deadline, those organizations could stand to lose their contracts.

The move toward performance evaluations at DHS follows an increasingly focused effort across sectors to track social impact — especially for use as a funding determinant.

People, whether they’re investors or grantmakers or tax-payers, want the best bang for their buck, and we know millennials place extra emphasis on spending for social impact. It makes sense, then, that the government bodies they come to inherit will follow suit.