In January 2013, few people in South Carolina had ever heard of Pay for Success financing (PFS), a new approach to funding solutions to difficult social problems. PFS uses private and philanthropic capital to expand successful projects, even when government budgets are strapped. But by September of that year, the state had expressed interest in using PFS to improve maternal and child health, issuing a “request for information” seeking formal input on how this financing mechanism could be implemented.