Salt Lake County Pay For Success Project Facilitation
Facilitating outcomes-based funding contracts for Salt Lake County organizations.

Sorenson Impact Center helps find solutions to social problems by engaging cross-sector groups and individuals to ensure social services are working for the communities they serve.

Pay for Success is an innovative financing approach that uses outcomes-based funding to create contracts that help achieve this goal.

As a project manager for the Salt Lake County’s $11.3 million Pay for Success Portfolio, we have coordinated and facilitated operations for the projects’ partners including: the Road Home, First Step House, Salt Lake County, Utah Criminal Justice Center, Community Foundation Utah, and various other private investors.

Over the course of the 2000’s into the early 2010’s, Salt Lake County observed an increasingly concerning homelessness and jail overcrowding. The County government chose to use an outcomes based financing approach (Pay For Success) to fund two 6 year long RCT’s focused on providing wrap around services with a Housing First approach to homelessness, and a therapy based intervention for addressing jail/prison recidivism for justice involved adult males. The two PFS projects are known as HNJ and REACH respectively.

With a combined $11.7M in funding, HNJ and REACH enabled service offering to 673 individuals. The REACH project was successful in improving arrest and jail stay outcomes among other criminogenic factors. The HNJ project showed improvements in employment, housing stability, and access to mental health services. Importantly, both service providers have found sustainable funding for both interventions to persist beyond the scope of the PFS project.

The Partner

The Road Home, First Step House, Salt Lake County, Utah Criminal Justice Center, Community Foundation Utah

The Challenge

Government contracts for social services are increasingly shifting to outcomes-based modeling. This means resources are going to high-performing services have measurable outcomes. Ensuring all parties involved in these Pay for Success contracts requires extensive management and facilitation.

The Outcome

The Sorenson Impact Center has helped Salt Lake County and various organizations and private investors work together to provide the best services possible to residents while effectively using government resources.

The Impact

Using Pay for Success contracts not only are government resources used more efficiently but individuals can benefit from the emphasis on high quality services. Together our focus on reducing homelessness and recidivism in Salt Lake County through innovative finance will promote positive change in the community.
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