Resources

Resources for Implementing the Five Strategies

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Featured resources: See the links below for RFA templates and sample language you can use to implement each strategy in the guide. Download, copy, paste, and customize for your next grant or contract!

Define Evidence of Effectiveness

• RFA's Evidence Definitions support government leaders to learn, improve and invest in what works. RFA additionally distinguishes between “Evidence-Based Program” and “Evidence-Building Program” and the various types of evidence that might go into each.
• RFA's templates for defining evidence allow you to get a jump start on developing an evidence framework for your agency.
• Pew Charitable Trusts and Pennsylvania State University’s Results First Clearinghouse brings together information on the effectiveness of social policy programs, including workforce topics, from nine national clearinghouses.
• The Texas Workforce Commission has recorded an evidence-based grant-making webinar series on how and why the agency uses evidence to allocate grant funds.
• The U.S. Department of Labor’s Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research (CLEAR), includes descriptive, implementation, and impact studies for workforce development and employment-related programs on a wide variety of topics. CLEAR rates the evidence presented in impact studies as high, moderate, or low depending on how confident they can be that the study outcomes are attributable to the program. See CLEAR’s Causal Evidence Guidelines for more information on these ratings.

Prioritize Evidence

• RFA's templates for prioritizing evidence offer sample language and structures to include in RFPs and NOFOs.
• Harvard Government Performance Labs’s Procurement Excellence Network offers many resources, case studies, templates, and training to help governments use procurement to achieve better outcomes for residents.
• Harvard Government Performance Lab’s Guidebook for Crafting a Results-Driven Request for Proposals (RFP) provides step-by-step guidance to help state and local government agencies write results-driven RFPs and improve the RFP development process.

Link Provider Payments to Outcomes

• RFA's templates for performance-based contracts and grants include sample language you can customize to closely tie funding to important outcomes.
• Logic models are helpful tools for designing, implementing, and evaluating programs. A logic model is a depiction of how a particular program is expected or intended to work, including the resources going toward the program, program activities and operations, and desired outputs and outcomes. An agency might create a logic model for a particular program or might require or encourage applicants to develop a logic model showing how a new, untested service delivery strategy will lead to improved outcomes. Results for America has created a basic logic model template, and the Kellogg Foundation’s Logic Model Development Guide provides a deeper dive.

Active Contract Management

• RFA's templates for active contract and grant management provide sample language for including ACM requirements in funding opportunities.
• Harvard Government Performance Lab’s policy brief, Active Contract Management: How Governments Can Collaborate More Effectively with Social Service Providers to Achieve Better Results, describes the problems that active contract management aims to solve, discusses the benefits of using these strategies, and outlines elements of effective active contract management systems.
• Harvard Government Performance Lab’s Six Tools for Implementing Active Contract Management provides technical guidance to help governments use active contract management strategies to produce better results from their contracted services.
• Harvard Government Performance Lab offers a number of case studies on how state and local governments are using active contract management to improve procurement outcomes.

Build Evidence Through Evaluations

• RFA's evaluation templates include sample language to help your agency require or incentivize a variety of evaluation types in grants and contracts.
• Beloved Community’s overview of Community-Based Participatory Action Research (PAR) underscores the importance of engaging community members as full partners at every stage of the research process, including shaping research questions and empowering community members to collect and analyze data.
• Conservation Law Foundation’s Participatory Action Research Field Guide offers step-by-step guidance on setting up and administering research projects in partnership with communities.
• J-PAL and Results for America have partnered to create the Leveraging Evaluation and Evidence for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) program, an opportunity for state and local decision-makers to develop a basic understanding of evaluation, knowledge of what it takes to build evidence and evaluation capacity, and the opportunity to access tailored support and connections with experts in the evidence and evaluation field.
• J-PAL's Research Resource Library offers step-by-step guidance for those new to randomized evaluations and includes J-PAL's Introduction to Randomized Evaluations.
• JPAL's Catalog of Administrative Datasets provides information on administrative data that can be used in research and evaluations.
• Mathematica's two-pager on rapid-cycle evaluations (RCEs) provides information on the types of questions RCEs can help agencies answer and examples of RCEs in workforce settings.
• The Kellogg Foundation’s Evaluation Handbook provides detailed guidance for each step of the evaluation process, including identifying stakeholders and building an evaluation team, developing research questions, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating findings.
• The U.S. Department of Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office conducts rigorous and objective research on a wide variety of topics that may be useful information for workforce agencies as they consider expansion, revision, or development of programs.
• WIOA regulations specify evaluation responsibilities for states, which stipulate that states conduct evaluations of activities under the WIOA Title I core programs to promote continuous improvement, research and test innovative services and strategies, and achieve high levels of performance and outcomes.

Other Resources

Equity

• The Local and Regional Government Alliance on Race & Equity and Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington have a number of equity tools and resources geared toward local governments.
• Urban Institute’s Community Voice and Power Sharing Guidebook offers practical advice on partnership building, community advisory boards, community-engaged survey development, and youth engagement.
• Urban Institute’s Data Walks tool guides program administrators and service providers on sharing data and research findings with program participants, community members and other stakeholders, allowing for a richer understanding and contextualization of those data or research findings.
• Chicago Beyond’s Why Am I Always Being Studied? guidebook includes questions and considerations for researchers, community-based organizations, and funders to ensure evaluations reflect community needs, goals, experience, and expertise.
• The Community Toolbox has guidance for gathering community input through focus groups and surveys.
• Racial Equity Tools also offers many resources on equitable data collection methods.
• Urban Institute’s Spatial Equity Data Tool is designed to help government agencies, policymakers, and community advocates easily assess demographic and spatial disparities in their data.

Additional Resources From Results for America

• RFA's 2022 Invest in What Works Federal Standard of Excellence shows how nine federal agencies are building and using evidence and data in their budget, policy, and management decisions to get better results for young people, their families, and communities.
• RFA's 2023 Invest in What Works State Standard of Excellence showcases 194 efforts (in effect as of August 2023) across 46 states that show how states are using data and evidence to achieve better outcomes and invest in what works, particularly through evidence-based grantmaking, budgeting and direct services. RFA's Honor Roll of State Grant Programs that Define and Prioritize Evidence of Effectiveness showcases state grant programs in workforce development and other issue areas that define and prioritize evidence of effectiveness.
• RFA's Economic Mobility Catalog includes evidence-based workforce development strategies and best practices for implementation.
• RFA's Job Quality Playbook is a step-by-step guide for workforce and economic development agencies to advance job quality and support both workers and employers.