Vanessa Crossgrove Fry, research director of the Idaho Policy Institute, was published in the Aug. 29 issue of Public Administration Review.
“Pay for Success: Diffusion of Policy Innovation for Social and Economic Stability” looks at pay‐for‐success financing, which has been able to overcome hurdles to implementing new policy solutions to persistent social problems. Such hurdles include a lack of funding and a reluctance to take on the risks inherent in implementing new programs.
A recent innovation in the policy domain, pay‐for‐success is a financing model that enables outcomes-oriented public spending through the financing of social or environmental interventions with private sector and/or philanthropic capital. Fry concludes that the societal and environmental problems the U.S. are up against today cannot be solved through business-as-usual tactics. Instead, innovation in service provision and program funding will need to occur to address these issues.