The Social Innovation Fund is a Corporation for National and Community Service initiative that transforms lives by catalyzing broader impact of effective nonprofits. We've told its story in many ways, but sometimes a picture -- or in this case, a video -- is worth a thousand words.

Click below to take a look!

 

The video was produced by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, a coalition representing 400 grantmaking organizations dedicated to building strong and effective nonprofit organizations to tackle some of the nation's toughest challenges.

We hope you enjoy the video and share it with friends, colleagues, and community leaders who are interested in seeing nonprofit programs with evidence of results expand to reach more people and places across the country.

Visit the National Service Blog to read more stories about the work the Social Innovation Fund is doing across the nation.

Arriving in the United States is just the start of the journey for refugees like Alaa, an engineer from Iraq. Unable to find a job, his first few months in America were a struggle, as he tried to cover his most basic needs. Alaa was eager for a job – any job – to become self-sufficient while he studied to resume work as an engineer in a new country.
 

I am thrilled to announce that the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) has selected four outstanding new grantees. These grantees will expand the impact of nonprofit programs with evidence of strong results by implementing exciting programs that will transform lives and communities.
 

Sarah had been living with HIV for 10 years when she discontinued her treatment. After witnessing a murder in her neighborhood, she was afraid to leave her house for care. She was isolated, suffering from post-traumatic stress, and had to cope without HIV treatment for more than three years.
 

Travis is a single father of two from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since 2008, Travis had bounced between part-time and temporary jobs. His wages had peaked at around $10 per hour, though he needed at least $12-$14 an hour to support his family. With limited interviewing and workforce experience, he didn't think he would ever find full-time work – let alone have a career.
 

Josh, 45, was one of the millions of Americans suffering from a mental illness, but he was not receiving treatment. He was unemployed and living in a halfway house, and he could hardly find the motivation to do the dishes or leave his room.
 

Alison's daily struggles while raising two young children made her dream of a college degree seem unobtainable. But things began to turn around when the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, DC connected her with a Promotor.
 

This week, I had the pleasure of attending the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in Chicago, IL. This annual gathering of the nonprofit sector brings together activists and organizers, government officials and nonprofit leaders from around the country.
 

The Social Innovation Fund is excited to announce the applicants to the 2012 grant competition. We received 31 applications by the due date of March 27, of which 25 were compliant and moved on to the full competition.
 

The Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), a New York City-based Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant recipient, recently won Harvard University's noteworthy Kennedy School of Government Innovations in American Government Award for its powerful approach to fighting poverty in New York and across the country.
 

More than a quarter of Colorado's third-graders are not reading at grade level, a concerning statistic as early childhood literacy is one of the most important predictors of school success and high school graduation. Stakeholders across diverse sectors including federal, state, and local governments, educators, nonprofits, business leaders, and foundations have teamed up to improving childhood literacy as a top priority for the state.
 

February 10, we announced the 2012 Social Innovation Fund Grants Competition and we encourage all qualified grantmakers to consider applying. Applications will be due by Tuesday, March 27, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time.
 

Today, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) announced grants totaling $2.1 million to five communities as a means to support local, employer-led workforce partnerships. These grants represent the third round of funding supported by the federal Social Innovation Fund grant awarded to the National Fund and its implementation partner, Jobs for the Future.
 

Residents of Wolfe and Powell County in Kentucky have very limited access to primary care services, and long drives to access specialists who can meet their health needs. With its leveraged SIF funding from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, St. Joseph Health System is addressing this issue by establishing two virtual primary care delivery clinics to provide primary care services in these rural areas.
 

One of Cumberland Family Medical Center, Inc.'s satellite clinics is located in McCreary County, Kentucky. McCreary County is the 4th least healthy county in Kentucky, as ranked by the Kentucky Institute of Medicine, and is both a Medically Underserved and a Health Professional Shortage Area. As such, it embodies a “last mile” problem in access to health care services.
 

The Kentucky nonprofit, Home of the Innocents, provides dental services to children in state care, children with special health care needs, and other children and families served by the Home and its partner agencies.
 

On Chicago's southwest side, the three predominantly Latino neighborhoods where Instituto del Progreso Latino works suffer from low incomes, low education levels, and rates of unemployment as high as 15%.
 

Through the Social Innovation Fund, The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is also supporting the expansion of WorkAdvance. WorkAdvance seeks to boost the earnings of unemployed and low-wage working adults by helping them prepare for and enter quality jobs in targeted industries with opportunities for career growth.
 

The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City has made SIF-leveraged investments to leading job training non-profits to expand and scale evidence-based innovations that are designed to break the cycle of poverty and build economic self-sufficiency in diverse communities across the country.
 

When Jerry* was nine, he was living with his alcoholic mother. All four of his siblings had already been removed from the home, but, somehow, Jerry was still there. Everything changed when, left home alone one summer day, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. As a result, Jerry was remitted to the child welfare system.
 

Lawrence Caldwell quit school, ran away from an abusive home and was well on his way to becoming another faceless statistic of America's drop out crisis, until he enrolled in the Gateway to College program at Montgomery College in Maryland. He excelled academically and is now an undergraduate at The George Washington University.