The Corporation for National & Community Service (CNCS) has selected four experienced grant makers to receive $8 million intended to help organizations improve the lives of people in low-income communities.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a Washington, D.C-based federal agency that engages more than 5 million Americans in service through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and other programs; improves communities through the Social Innovation Fund; and leads President Obama's United We Serve initiative.

The new grantees presented proposals designed to tackle persistent community challenges in the areas of youth development, economic opportunity, and healthy futures. The four new awards will fund the initial two years of each grant. An additional $33.9 million was provided to seven existing grantees to continue their work based on consistent and compelling results.

Under the Social Innovation Fund's public-private partnership model, each federal dollar granted must be matched one-to-one by the grantees and again by their subgrantees with money from private and other non federal sources, thereby increasing the return on taxpayer dollars and strengthening local support. The grants announced earlier this month will leverage more than $100 million in additional nonfederal funds, resulting in a total of nearly $150 million to support the growth of innovative nonprofits.

"The Social Innovation Fund invests in proven programs that are helping young people succeed in school, improving the health of underserved populations, and helping people find jobs and increase economic security," says Wendy Spencer, CEO of CNCS. "This is a smart approach that leverages private investment to expand programs that work."

The Social Innovation Fund, now in its third year, awarded $95 million to 16 grant makers that have in turn invested in nearly 200 nonprofit organizations in 34 states and Washington, D.C. More than $250 million in additional private and nonfederal funds are being leveraged through the program.

"As our new grantees engage a whole new group of nonprofits and our continuing grantees continue pushing the envelope with the nonprofits they are working with, we look forward to seeing hundreds of thousands more lives transformed," says Paul Carttar, Director of the Social Innovation Fund.

The new Social Innovation Fund grantees will each receive grants of $2 million over two years. The grantees are:

•GreenLight Fund, which works with the local communities to attract and support relevant national programs to close the achievement and opportunity gap for youth. In Boston, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay area, the programs could help 20,000 low-income children by improving school persistence and academic achievement, increasing high school graduation and GED attainment, and increasing college access, credit accumulation, and degree completion.

•Twin Cities Strive, which in partnership with Greater Twin Cities United Way will support a strong portfolio of replicable, evidence-based youth programs serving kids from kindergarten through college in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. The organizations will support programs designed to improve kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading proficiency, ninth-grade readiness for upper-level math, four-year graduation rates, and college enrollment rates for between 1,500 and 2,000 low-income youth each year.

•The John A. Hartford Foundation, which has 80 years of experience supporting nonprofit organizations across the country. The money will be used to expand an evidence-based program for treating depression in rural communities in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska. Effective treatment using the program's model is said to improve depression symptoms, social and work-related functioning, and economic outcomes.

•Capital Area United Way (CAUW), which will build community impact initiatives aimed at boosting success in early childhood in the Greater Baton Rouge area. CAUW will strive to improve children's school readiness by ensuring positive birth outcomes, strong parental engagement, support, and education (including financial education), and access to quality child care and preschool. The organization also will work to ensure that children's physical health, safety, and social-emotional needs are met.

In addition, seven Social Innovation Fund grantees are receiving a total of $33.9 million to continue their work "to expand the impact of powerful nonprofits." The recipients include: AIDS United, $1.8 million; Jobs for the Future and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, $2 million; Local Initiatives Support Corp., $8.4 million over two years; Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City and the Center for Economic Opportunity, $5.7 million; Missouri Foundation for Health, $894,636; New Profit, $5 million; and The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, $10 million.