News from Australia to Utah – not quite the entire span of the alphabet but pretty close…
Social Investment Bond Earns By Doing Good
Dean Smith – Australian Financial Review
As Australia becomes a larger and more diverse nation, the complexity of some of our social challenges will grow.
This is an inevitable consequence of growth – there are always some negative externalities that accompany social change. The key is to manage those challenges in the most effective manner possible. This complexity also brings new opportunities.
These opportunities mean moving beyond a mindset that defaults to ‘the government’ as being the solution to every social challenge, and instead looks at ways to harness the energies, resources and talents of others.
Enter stage-right an imaginative financing tool, known as a ‘social investment bond’. A social investment bond (also referred to as a ‘social impact bond’) encourages private investors to provide capital for projects aimed at delivering particular social benefits, such as reducing unemployment, homelessness or drug use. Investors then earn a financial return, commensurate with the success of the project in delivering on the desired social benefit in delivering the procured social benefit.
In important ways, the use of social investment bonds can act as a catalyst for improving accountability in social programs, as they impose a need to measure outcomes (successful or otherwise), and often include a mechanism for independent monitoring and evaluation to adjudicate on the financial returns to investors.
State To Receive Pay for Success Assistance
Mike Gorrell – Salt Lake Tribune
The Utah Governor’s Office of Management and Budget is one of six government agencies in the Intermountain area that will receive funding and technical support to address pressing social issues through the national Pay for Success Initiative.
The aid is designed to “develop innovative, evidence-based interventions that measurably improve the lives of individuals and families in their communities,” said Jeremy Keele, executive director of the Policy Innovation Lab in the James Lee Sorenson Global Impact Investing Center at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business.
Last year, the lab received $1.15 million from the Corporation for National and Community Service to help prepare state and local governments — and service providers — to implement Pay for Success programs. More funding came from the James Lee Sorenson Foundation and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.