PLY: A vast dose of UK SIB news with a dessert from Notre Dame in the heart of the mid west…
New Social Impact Bonds To Support Public Services
Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions,The Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, Rob Wilson MP and Andrew Selous MP
Seven new Social Impact Bond investment schemes aim to support social entrepreneurs and help to reform public services. The UK now has more Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) than the rest of the world put together.
SIBs are a form of social investment where private investors provide the capital to address complex social problems. It is a payment by results system. Investors fund innovative interventions and the government only pays if these interventions succeed in, for example, helping young people get back into education.
Cabinet Office Launches Seven New Social Impact Bonds
Alice Sharman – Civil Society
The Cabinet Office has announced the launch of seven new social impact bonds which will help disadvantaged young people, children in care and those with long term health conditions and mental illness.
The seven new SIBs will bring the current number in the UK up to 31, more than the rest of the world put together. Four of the new SIBs will be funded by the Youth Engagement Fund, and will support up to 8,000 disadvantaged young people to improve educational qualifications and secure employment.
The Fund, which aims to find new ways to address challenges facing disadvantaged young people, includes £10m from the Cabinet Office, £5m from the Department for Work and Pensions and £1m from the Ministry of Justice.
The Social Outcomes Fund will provide £2.5m to support three additional SIBs to help people with long term health conditions, mental illness and children in care. £1m will support a SIB to support 8,000 people in the North East with health conditions such as lung disease, diabetes and asthma.
Impetus-PEF Charity Teens And Toddlers Wins A Second Social Impact Bond
Impetus PEF
The Private Equity Foundation (ImpetusPEF) announced it is investing £200,000 in a second social impact bond, worth £3 million and awarded to Teens and Toddlers as part of the Youth Engagement Fund. Teens and Toddlers is a youth development charity that drives improved behavioural and educational outcomes for teenagers through a highly structured programme in which teens aged 14-16 are paired as mentors to vulnerable toddlers in a supervised nursery environment. Impetus-PEF is a charity which brings funding and strategic resources to highpotential charities and social enterprises working in the UK to improve the lives and prospects of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Qualitative Evaluation Of The London Homelessness Social Impact Bond: Second Interim Report
Department for Communities and Local Government
The London homelessness social impact bond project was launched in November 2012. It was designed to bring in additional finance to support innovative services aimed at improving outcomes for a cohort of 830 persistent rough sleepers.
This is the second interim report from the qualitative evaluation. An economic and impact evaluation is being undertaken internally at the Department for Communities and Local Government. The qualitative and impact strands of the evaluation will be brought together in a synthesis report in 2016.
Seb Elsworth To Lead Access: The Foundation For Social Investment, Launched
Third Sector
The £100m government backed charity, which calls itself ‘a sister organisation to Big Society Capital’, will support capacity-building initiatives.
‘Impact Investing’ At ND
Gene Stowe – South Bend Tribune
A student initiative at the University of Notre Dame is hoping to help the university emerge as a leader in “impact investing” — pursuing not just financial profits but measurable social benefits as well.
Co-founder Thomas Flaim, a junior at Notre Dame, says Unleashed has grown to more than 80 engaged students in less than two years. The group is working with Reading for Life, a successful program to help nonviolent first-time offenders avoid further legal trouble, Flaim says, and is in collaboration with the Jubilee Initiative For Financial Inclusion (JIFFI) that offers microlending as an alternative to payday loans.
The club, which had a judged Pitch Competition in Notre Dame’s Main Building as part of its educational efforts, is taking a multi-pronged approach in the impact investing field, Flaim says.
“We are trying to get a student-run fund, we are working with budding social enterprises, and we’re exploring the idea of establishing a Social Impact Bond Lab similar to Harvard’s,” he says. “It kind of took on a life of its own. It was a lot of meeting one-on-one with people, different professors, people in South Bend.”