Blog

This blog was originally published by Philanthropy California. ...

Even before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the State of Connecticut faced a series of workforce challenges: skilled workers were taking job opportunities in neighboring states, leaving employers in the lurch. At the same time, as in many other states, unemployed and underemployed residents in Connecticut were facing significant barriers to economic mobility, including a lack of access to affordable training programs and supportive services. ...

You can’t improve something if you don’t know it’s working. As a researcher and program evaluator, I’ve spent my professional career assessing interventions to determine if they are improving people’s lives. But waiting years to measure a program’s outcomes isn’t enough. By the time you have the results, it’s too late for the many individuals who continue to receive those services....

Donnie Charleston recently joined Social Finance to help lead its growing public sector partnership work. In this interview, Donnie discusses his background in local and state government and his vision for supporting public sector institutions seeking to spark change.

In February, after years of intense litigation, 46 states and thousands of local governments agreed to a $26 billion dollar settlement with four of the country’s largest drug distributors to end all civil liability for their role in that opioid epidemic. These funds will be made available across the country for addiction treatment, prevention services, and social services. But how can we ensure that the money will actually make an impact?

We believe employers can and should engage more deeply in innovative solutions to today’s talent challenges. That’s why Social Finance is working to identify effective and underutilized opportunities for employers to finance, train, hire, and retain diverse talent with support from Walmart.

In our recent workshop at the 2022 National Association Workforce Boards Forum, we teamed up with Sarah Miller of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Tyrone Hampton Jr. of Philadelphia Works, and Angela Jackson, formerly of New Profit, to discuss Workforce Realigned: How New Partnerships Are Advancing Economic Mobility—a book by Social Finance and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Philadelphia that rethinks the way we finance worker upskilling.

The disruptions of the past two years have brought unprecedented changes to the American workforce, especially when it comes to the role of women, who remain 2 million jobs short of pre-Covid employment levels. As we rebuild our economy in the wake of the pandemic, we must do so in a way that fully enables and values the contributions of women. ...

As Treasury prepares to release their second round of SIPPRA funding, they have an opportunity to rethink the implementation of the program and unlock its potential to create long-term prosperity for our nation’s children.

Last year, Social Finance partnered with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to launch a multi-stakeholder, clean-energy training project to support the state’s ambitious clean energy goals.