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Nearly All of the BYR Programs Are at Least Partially Meeting Their Goals

• The vast majority of programs that we evaluated have at least partially met their stated goals. In one instance, we determined that a program had not met its stated goals; in another instance, we lacked sufficient information to determine whether the program met its stated goal. In most cases when programs failed to meet goals, this was at least partly due to the goals being unclear or difficult to measure or because the program was very new. A lack of evidence that demonstrated progress toward a goal is also an issue for some programs.

Overall, Programs Are Implementing Many Promising Practices

• The promising practices that we identified across the various programs include a close alignment between activities and goals; a single point of entry for clients; personalized, one-on-one services; geographically dispersed staff; activities that build long-term client skills; strong partnerships with other resource providers; strong partnerships with community organizations and employers; early engagement with mobilized units; broad and creative outreach strategies; strong technology-based tracking systems; and efforts to make programs replicable and sustainable.

Authors Identified Four Areas Across Programs That Could Be Improved

• RAND found a few pressing areas for improvement upon which many of the programs can focus. These include a lack of well-defined, measurable goals; insufficient evidence of outcomes and impacts; insufficient outreach to the entire eligible population; and no contingency plan to account for BYR funding limitations.