Developing a SII proposal

Your proposal should include: 

• the social issue that your program is looking to address including evidence of research and knowledge grounded in the needs of the local community. 
• a description of the service model and its key components. It is important to include how the program demonstrates innovation and additionality. Additionality refers to how the program provides benefits over and above what is delivered by existing services. 
• how the proposed service will be delivered in a manner respectful of and appropriate to the local context and people, including culture.   
• a clearly defined target cohort with shared characteristics that can be objectively identified through eligibility criteria.  
• the referral process and clear understanding of how participants will connect with your program. Consider the size of the total target cohort and if it is sufficiently large to support the proposed scale of service. 

Measuring impact is at the heart of SII. The objective is to incentivise and facilitate collaborative efforts to improve social outcomes and establish an evidence base of ‘what works’. Your proposal should identify: 

• The long-term impact of the program on the target cohort through the funding sought. As the impact is often observed far into the future, proposals should consider robust ways to measure outcomes in the short to medium term. 
• Payable outcome metrics that can be measured in the program’s delivery timeframe or soon after. Outcome metrics must be objective, reliable, collectable, and linked to the social and fiscal benefits of the program to government. Proposals should identify at least one payable outcome metric that will be linked to government outcome payments.  
• How outcomes will be collected, measured and evidenced. Consider what datasets will be required and how the incremental impact of the program will be measured. The incremental impact of a program is measured by comparing outcomes achieved to a counterfactual. This may be a control group or an historical performance baseline.  
• Supporting evidence that the program can deliver the outcomes identified. 

You may choose to also include: 

• Milestone metrics which indicate progress towards achieving outcomes. 
• Broader outcomes that can be included in a program evaluation of the overall impact of the program. 

SII partners work collaboratively towards a common goal of achieving positive social outcomes, and share the risks and rewards of doing so through an outcome-based contract. This form of contracting requires service providers to have the skills and capability to: 

• deliver the program and proposed outcomes 
• measure and report on outcomes 
• manage the risks of an outcomes-based contract and  
• foster collaborative partnerships.  

Proposals should include evidence of this capability, by outlining the: 

• experience and past achievements of the team/organisation in delivering relevant services and effectively managing partnerships with government, investors, and other partners. 
• existing approaches and frameworks to manage outcome-based contracts. 
• data systems that collect, record and analyse client and outcomes data. 
• risk management approach/plan. 

SII focuses on prevention and early intervention programs to empower people to improve their life outcomes and reduce the need for avoidable Government support throughout their lives. Through SII funding NSW Government funds programs that deliver measurable benefits in the form of reduction and/or avoidance of government service usage.

This means that a program’s total costs should be at least covered, if not exceeded by the estimated Government benefits that the program will deliver. Providers should consider whether the benefits based on the outcomes delivered by their program cover set-up costs, cost of delivering the proposed services, transaction costs and any return to investors (if applicable).