During the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. from June 29 through July 2, we had the opportunity to videotape eight attendees speaking forthrightly about their areas of expertise, and we’ve been posting them weekly.

The first installment featured Lunda Asmani, Chief Financial Officer for Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut and the new president of the GFOA. The second was with Liz Farmer, officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. The third was with Tanya Garost, City Manager of Martensville, Saskatchewan, and recent past president of GFOA. Three weeks ago, we featured Justin Marlowe, a research professor in the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, where he also serves as Director for the Center for Municipal Finance. A couple of weeks back, we added Dustin Lanier, founder and principal consultant for Civic Initiatives LLC., to the group. And last week the video was with Andrew Kleine, a managing director at Ernst and Young.

This week we visit with Haley Kadish, who works on the local practice team for Results for America, a national nonprofit. She works with cities and counties to help them to invest in solutions to their problems for which there is solid evidence that they work. 

“The challenge that we see is that currently governments spend over $1 trillion a year on solutions and programs that are meant to advance economic mobility. Unfortunately, only about two percent of that is going toward evidence-based practice, so that means that less than two percent . . . is going to programs that have been proven to work.”

As Kalish explains, there are three big levers for which evidence-based solutions are vital: budgeting, direct services and grant making/contracting.