Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program, Implementation ...

74received a total of just about $2,000 on its 10 to 15 employed Ticket holders, which did notcome close to covering its costs.The 29 EN officials we interviewed said that an SSA-funded effort to help ENsnationwide secure financing for up-front Ticket services has been of little or no help. Theeffort was intended to acquaint ENs with grants, loans, and other resources through a“capitalization initiative” developed by the Program Manager. The initiative involves writtenresource materials and presentations at conferences and workshops around the country. AllENs were reportedly notified about the initiative in the mail and sent a copy of the materials,which can also be accessed on the Program Manager’s TTW website. About half of the ENrepresentatives we interviewed, however, were unaware of this initiative. Among those whohad heard of it, most had only a vague notion of what it was about. Only a few EN officialsclaimed any real familiarity with it, but none of them had used the information to securefunds for three reasons: they did not see the need for the initiative, they felt that it wouldnot be a good fit for their agency, or they did not have the time or staff to devote to such aneffort. One EN Ticket coordinator who had attended an information session on theinitiative saw it as an attempt to transfer the responsibility for what was essentially a basicprogram design problem to ENs. According to this interviewee, “We’re not interested infundraising. We’re doing SSA a favor” by operating as an EN. Rather than promotingfundraising, she said, SSA should adjust the payment system so that participatingorganizations do not need to go out and raise funds.3. EN Financial Success Under TTWA comprehensive analysis of EN financial success would require detailed cost andrevenue information, which was beyond the scope of our data collection activities this year.However, we can provide a national overview of Ticket revenues based on data on paymentsmade to ENs, and for the 29 ENs we studied we can discuss their self-reported financialsuccess and their experience with the factors that affect revenues—placements and theoperation of the payment system. We return to the issue of ENs’ financial success inChapter VIII, which documents a simulation of the net financial incentives provided to ENsby TTW.a. National Data on Payments to ENsAs of late July 2004, a cumulative total of about $900,000 in milestone and outcomepayments had been made to ENs for Ticket holders who had returned to work 3 (Figure V.3).Most of this money (79 percent) was paid to ENs for Ticket holders residing in Phase 1states, which is to be expected because ENs in those states have generally been takingTickets longer than those in Phase 2 states. The dollar amount of monthly payments hasgenerally been increasing, although there was a pronounced dip in the second half of 2003(Figure V.4).3 This figure does not include payments made to SVRAs for beneficiaries being served under one of thetwo TTW payment systems. Payments to SVRAs are reported in Chapter VI.V: EN Participation in Ticket to Work