Social investment comes to the G8
http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk
These are heady days for impact investing, and the Prime Minster’s call for a G8 Social Impact Investment Forum on 6th June promises to be a watershed event. Three emerging trends herald an auspicious occasion.
First, innovative solutions to seemingly intractable social problems developed in one country are being exported to others, accelerating the prospects for wider adoption. For example, after some three decades of painstaking testing, refinement and validation in the U.S., Multi-Systemic Therapy and the Nurse-Family Partnership still reach less than 5% of the at-risk children and first-time mothers whose lives they can transform. In June, 2011, the report of the Early Intervention Review Team led by Graham Allen MP showcased both prevention programs, attracting the support of Big Issue Invest, NESTA, Impetus Trust, Big Society Capital, Social Finance Ltd., the Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund, and other impact investing pioneers. These exemplary “evidence-based practices” could well span the UK in less than a decade.
Development Impact Bonds: Comments Welcome
http://www.cgdev.org/
On the eve of the Social Impact Investment summit in London this Thursday, 6th June, I am excited that CGD and Social Finance are releasing a consultation draft (PDF) of the report of the Working Group on Development Impact Bonds that we have convened over the past year.
Many of us working in development policy have attended dozens of meetings and conferences where participants applaud (even if some privately bemoan) the changing landscape of development finance. Traditional aid flows are now dwarfed by developing government revenues, private investment, remittances, and money from private foundations and new official donors. This is, of course, very good news, and these conferences invariably conclude with a call for “innovative” ways for these many diverse interests to work together. But as a senior donor agency official admitted to me the other day, “When we get back to the office we don’t know what to do.”