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Coalition Mission/History:

 

The Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to tackle major U.S. social problems using rigorous evidence about “what works.” From 2001-2015, the Coalition focused on federal policy, working closely with the Bush and Obama administrations to secure enactment of key evidence-based reforms in education, employment, early childhood, and child welfare.

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In 2015, the Coalition team joined the national philanthropy Arnold Ventures to build and lead a new Evidence-Based Policy initiative. In that role, we funded a large portfolio of research and program grants that successfully expanded the number of programs shown in rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to produce important, lasting improvements in people’s lives.

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Current Work:

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The Coalition relaunched as an independent nonprofit in 2023 with a new focus on advancing evidence-based solutions at the state and local level. We work closely with top officials in five states – as well as philanthropies including Arnold Ventures, The Duke Endowment, and Ascendium – to implement Partnership for Proven Programs (PFPP) initiatives. PFPP is a model that matches philanthropic and public funding to (i) scale programs proven effective in rigorous evaluations and (ii) build new evidence on highly promising approaches.

 

Through PFPP initiatives, we have so far catalyzed over $70 million in new philanthropic and public funds to scale education, workforce, and youth development programs backed by rigorous RCTs, including Saga tutoring, ASSISTments, ASAP, QUEST, and Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based mentoring.

 

The Coalition also produces No-Spin Evidence Review, an online publication that distills recent program evaluations into clear, objective summaries of what the evidence shows – and does not show – for funders and policymakers. 

 

Core Capabilities: 

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The Coalition is unaffiliated with any programs or interventions, enabling us to serve as an impartial, expert resource on evidence-based programming. We work with philanthropies, governments, and other stakeholders to:

 

• Identify the subset of programs with credible evidence of meaningful, sustained impacts (versus the many others with weak or no evidence of effectiveness);

• Support the expansion of proven and highly promising programs while maintaining fidelity to their core features;

• Commission rigorous evaluations to build new evidence on promising programs; and

• Embed evidence-based criteria in philanthropic and public funding processes, so as to prioritize proven programs and rigorously evaluate others.

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