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America Forward recently submitted formal comments to the U.S. Department of the Treasury in response to its draft FY2026 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the $100 million Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) pay-for-success demonstration program. We deeply appreciate Treasury’s commitment to engaging stakeholders as it prepares to launch a third round of SIPPRA projects focused on workforce development and for its leadership of this critical program. Innovative financing of evidence-based programs is a top priority for the America Forward Coalition, and we have long supported the creation and effective implementation of SIPPRA.

Our comments address the following points:

• We support many new clarifications in the draft NOFO, including that outcome valuation may extend up to 10 years beyond the performance period; that savings may accrue to either federal or state and local governments; and Treasury’s efforts to streamline evaluation requirements and to leverage Bayesian approaches.
• Technical clarifications related to evaluation could strengthen accessibility, including allowing greater flexibility on statistical significance thresholds, which is particularly important to expand access for rural communities with smaller sample sizes, as well as providing broader clarity around the availability of quasi-experimental designs.
• We suggest that Treasury explicitly recognize additional workforce development outcomes, including benefits receipt, recidivism reduction, financial stability, multigenerational benefits, and earnings gains for individuals with barriers to employment.
• The federal government should affirmatively support applicants’ access to federal administrative data by publishing a clear inventory of available data and establishing pre-arranged access to data sets—and score applicants on the reasonableness of their data plans, not merely their current access.

Read America Forward’s full comment letter here. We deeply appreciate Treasury’s intentional, thoughtful approach to the SIPPRA program and its incorporation of public input into this final third round. We look forward to continuing to support the SIPPRA program.