Encouraging news from Australia and South Africa…
NSW Releases New Social Benefits Bond Opportunities
Lina Caneva – Pro Bono Australia
The New South Wales Government is expanding its social impact investment program – releasing its statement of opportunities to tackle key social challenges – after the success of its two trial initiatives.
The NSW Treasury said social impact investment provided the government with opportunities to deliver better outcomes for the community while opening up new sources of funding and encouraging collaboration between government, the community sector and private investors.
As a result the government has released its 2016 statement of opportunities, which outlined priority policy areas for social impact investment.
The three key policy areas are around establishing an Aboriginal Centre for Excellence in Western Sydney, increasing access to early childhood education and increasing permanency for children in out-of-home care, particularly through open adoption.
Nurture Beginning Right From The Cradle
Susan de Witt – BDLive
RSA government is exploring different ways of developing collaborative, mission-aligned public-private partnerships to maximise positive social impact in underserved communities.
One of the methods under investigation is that of outcomes-based contracting and finance models, with the goal of improving services in environments in which lots of money is being spent and people don’t appear to be commensurably better off.
To this end, the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Graduate School of Business has been working with the Western Cape government to design an Impact Bond Innovation Fund that aims to incentivise community-based organisations to improve health and development outcomes in pregnant women and young children.
The Western Cape departments of health and social development allocated up to R25m over three years to pay for results in this incredibly important early childhood development phase.