News from Australia where the government of the most populous state, New South Wales is keen to expand on the SIB opportunity while out of NSW comes news of an interesting new report on SIB performance analysis world-wide from the excellent offices of Emma Tomkinson in Sydney. Enjoy the read…
Australia – Private Sector To Fund Public Programs
PS News
A new policy of partnering with private investors to deliver Government programs to the vulnerable has been announced by the Premier, Mike Baird and Treasurer, Andrew Constance.
Claimed by the Ministers to be Australia’s first Social Impact Investment Policy, the plan is to partner with investors and the non-government sector to develop two new social impact investments to go to market every year.
“I want the NSW Government to be the most innovative in Australia,” Mr Baird said, releasing a Statement of Opportunities outlining the potential areas for future “social benefit bonds”.
The target investment areas included managing chronic health conditions; supporting offenders on parole to reduce their levels of re-offending; managing mental health hospitalisations; and, preventing or reducing homelessness among young people.
“We recognise that government cannot solve these challenges alone. By harnessing the innovation and capital of the non-government sectors, we can deliver better outcomes for our community and better value for taxpayers,” Mr Baird said.
Performance Analysts Crucial To Delivering Impact, New Report Reveals
Impetus PEF
A new report, jointly published by Impetus – The Private Equity Foundation (Impetus-PEF) in the UK, Social Investment Lab in Portugal, and Think Impact in Australia, demonstrates how crucial social performance analysts are for organisations who aim to deliver impact. Without a dedicated performance analyst, organisations will struggle to make data on social programs more meaningful and useful.
Delivering the Promise of Social Outcomes: the Role of the Performance Analyst is an international collection of case studies featuring people who have successfully applied social service data to help executives make decisions, managers support their staff and – importantly – enable service delivery staff to improve the lives of their clients. The report features UK based organisations who are leading the way in effective performance management systems including CHAIN UK, St Giles Trust UK and Social Enterprise Northwest.
Written by Sydney-based social impact analyst Emma Tomkinson, the report argues for greater investment in back office capabilities, contradicting one view that administrative spending should be trimmed in social programs.
The report highlights three key trends on why investing in performance management systems and their analysts is urgently needed: Outcome based contracts, where service delivery organisations are paid on the basis of the social outcomes they achieve, are proliferating Social impact bonds, where investor returns are dependent on the social outcomes achieved by the programs they invest in, are increasingly emerging The idea of ‘collective impact’ is rapidly gaining traction due to its requirement that organisations collaborate to deliver social outcomes.