PLY: Three crunchy stories, including sensible perspective on that left bogeyman Goldman Sachs (for once, they are doing God’s work via SIBs) and two excellent interventions from the UK, happy reading:
Goldman Sachs Paid To Expand Pre-K In Utah. It Worked.
Libby Nelson – Vox
There’s something for just about everyone to feel good about in Salt Lake’s pre-kindergarten program.
The state, with money from Goldman Sachs, expanded the program to serve more children from low-income families. In the end, Utah saved money, investors made money, and nearly every student who participated ended up not needing special education in kindergarten.
The Utah pre-K experiment is worth paying attention to for two reasons. It’s another piece of evidence that good-quality early childhood education can save money in the long term. But it’s also the result for a new, mostly untested way of paying for social programs known as a social impact bond: Private entities put up the money upfront, and the government only pays if the program gets the results it wants.
Social impact bonds are a relatively new idea, but they’re spreading quickly. About 40 projects are underway, seven in the US. The Utah pre-K program is, so far, the first American success.
The Government Can Create Opportunity For All In A New Way – It’s Time To Focus On Social Outcomes
Dominic Llewellyn – Conservative Home
Dominic Llewellyn is the Co-Founder of Numbers for Good, a pioneering social investment organisation. He stood for Parliament in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2010 and has a background in politics and setting up charities and social enterprises.
Over the past five years, there has been more focus on the public sector paying for outcomes; for example, in tackling long-term unemployment by only paying when people get – and keep – a job or tackling youth homelessness through only paying when a young person is housed and then accesses employment, education, training and volunteering opportunities.
Since standing for Parliament in 2010, I co-founded and help run Numbers for Good, supporting charities and social enterprises increase their impact through raising investment. Some of the work we do is help organisations bid for contracts like this, and create what are called social impact bonds. Social impact bonds – or SIBs as they are sometimes called – are where local or national government only pay for outcomes (i.e. for what works – often preventing the social issue in the first place, therefore saving money) and where investors take the risk on the innovative charities and social enterprises do by lending them the money upfront.
Too good to be true, you may ask? Not so. A Department for Work and Pensions programme targeting youth unemployment has stopped thousands of young people become unemployed in the first place and repaid investors, such as Bridges Ventures. Last year we worked with charities to launch two social impact bonds tackling youth homelessness across the North East and Yorkshire tackle homelessness through social impact bonds. We are currently working on ten more social impact bonds across health, education, employment and criminal justice.
Manchester City Council – A Social Impact Bond
Jock Rodger Strategic Lead Commissioner Children’s Services.