Although the number of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle has risen over the past few years in part due to structural factors such as housing affordability and inadequate mental healthcare, the city’s increased spending on homeless services has had a limited impact on the problem. The city of Seattle held a conglomeration of contracts with service providers, but it renewed almost any contract that complied with requirements and rarely evaluated the effectiveness of the services themselves. The GPL worked with Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD) to...
Join us on February 22, 2024, from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm ET for a virtual event featuring insights from Jeff Olivet, Executive Director of The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), as he discusses the recent Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR). Following his remarks, ...
Improving referrals and treatment adherence among child welfare parents in need of behavioral health services and using data for more informed strategies to reduce child fatalities
Michigan sought to expand prenatal and postpartum support in order to reduce the likelihood of negative health outcomes for new mothers and their children. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, Kent County is expanding comprehensive nurse home visiting services to every Medicaid-eligible, first-time mother to provide prenatal care, breastfeeding support, parenting and life skills-building, and additional services as needed. Assessed by a rigorous evaluation, the program is helping to reduce preterm births and rapid repeat pregnancies for new moms.
Striving to lower rates of preterm births and child injuries, the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership aims to give new moms the care they need to have healthy pregnancies and babies. The GPL worked with South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) to provide nurse home visiting services to 4,000 low-income, first-time mothers from the second trimester of their pregnancy until their child’s second birthday. The model incentivizes NFP to focus on enrolling mothers from low-income zip codes, reducing child injuries and pre-term births, and increasing healthy birth...
Since launching in 2011, the GPL has completed 242 projects in 36 states, supporting state and local governments to build more just and effective service systems. The GPL develops and tests innovations, invests in public servants, and spreads promising practices...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help the City of Tempe apply results-driven contracting strategies to improve the outcomes of its employee wellness program.
In Tempe, the city’s employee wellness program provides low-intensity supportive health and wellness services to all employees. However, the city had not clearly articulated the goals of the program nor set in place a method for evaluating the impact of the services. With the help of the GPL, Tempe reworked the...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL supported the City of Mesa, AZ in procuring for a partner organization to implement the Love Your Neighborhood (LYN) program, which is a community engagement and home rehabilitation initiative. The City wanted to provide residents with resources and services to create sustainable improvements in a neighborhood that was particularly challenged with high instances of code violations, graffiti, police calls, and vacancies. A program was launched to help homeowners qualify for and implement home...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Louisville design and pilot a strategic procurement system to improve the outcomes of the City’s contracted dollars.
When the procurement process is efficient, inviting, and inclusive, more firms and organizations will want to participate in contracting opportunities, resulting in greater competition. Positive relationships between vendors and governments during the course of a contract can lead to more...
A purchasing office can be a valuable partner in collaborating with departments or agencies on solicitations by providing strategic support, whether through helping staff write effective and clear specifications, guiding them to use correct procurement processes, or by informing them of...
A purchasing office can be a valuable partner in collaborating with departments or agencies on solicitations by providing strategic support, whether through helping staff write effective and clear specifications, guiding them to use correct procurement processes, or by informing them of...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Saint Paul expand the pool of vendors that bid on street reconstruction contracts and improve vendor management during construction.
The City of Saint Paul faced several key challenges with their street reconstruction contracts. Vendor competition was low, and projects ran past agreed-upon budgets and timelines. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, the city conducted a vendor survey and implemented pre-bid meetings to...
The GPL worked with DCYF on strategic planning to assess service needs and design an approach for improving services for children and families, executing a results-driven procurement for a new set of service contracts, strengthening their contract and provider performance management practices, and designing a strategic procurement management system to improve the results of contracted spending throughout the agency.
Although the number of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle has risen over the past few years in part due to structural factors such as housing affordability and inadequate mental healthcare, the city’s increased spending on homeless services has had a limited impact on the problem. The city of Seattle held a conglomeration of contracts with service providers, but it renewed almost any contract that complied with requirements and rarely evaluated the effectiveness of the services themselves. The GPL worked with Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD) to...
Charting the Course: Reflections on the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Pay for Success Pilot is a brief about GPL's Nurse Family Partnership Pay for Success project in South Carolina. It provides background on the purpose of including a pilot for this project, the “lessons learned” from the pilot, and why incorporating a pilot can improve the launch and operations of complex Pay for Success projects. Read the full brief... Read more about Social Finance: Reflections on the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Pay for Success Pilot
J-PAL is the evaluator for GPL's Nurse Family Partnership Pay for Success project in South Carolina. Results and policy lessons are forthcoming (as of September 2020) and can be viewed at this...
Between 2011 and 2017, homelessness in Los Angeles had increased 75% to an estimated 55,000. To combat this epidemic, voters in the region passed Measure H and Proposition HHH, which will provide $1.2 billion in bond revenue for new housing for the homeless and $355 million annually in sales tax revenue for homeless services such as diversion/prevention, interim housing...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Wichita reform its solicitations for grounds maintenance and landscaping services to improve the quality of City parks while reducing costs.
Wichita aimed to improve the quality of the city’s parks while reducing costs. In 2015, grounds maintenance bid amounts were up 30 percent over the prior year, contractors were failing to meet parks inspectors’ quality standards, and Wichita City officials had received numerous complaints about the...
The Boston Public Works Department’s contracts for road resurfacing were overly focused on achieving mileage targets to the detriment of other key goals, such as maintaining steady work flows and minimizing inconvenience to constituents. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the city incorporated results-driven contracting strategies to reorient the roadway resurfacing contracts around a holistic set of goals, provide vendors with incentives to meet these goals, and increase the flow of performance data enabling the Department to course correct issues in real-time. The...
In Illinois, approximately 700 youth per year become simultaneously involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These dually-involved youth experience very poor outcomes; on average 1,300 arrests per year and 230,000 days spent in congregate care. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the state tested a new model for supporting families involved with multiple agencies and has re-engineered data systems to improve performance management and referral processes. It now takes the state child welfare agency less than three days to identify a dually-involved youth,...
Improving workforce participation and employment outcomes for TANF employment programs through more integrated service array and active contract management
Data-Smart City Solutions featured the GPL's work with Long Beach, California on an "Extreme Procurement Makeover," designed to, "make procurement more efficient, results-driven, equitable, and sustainable, with a dedicated [GPL] Fellow, Rebecca Graffy, driving the work forward." Read the article. Read more about Long Beach Leads the Way on Inclusive Procurement