Governments and Development Agencies

Governments, development agencies or a combination of both can pay for outcomes through a social impact bond. Social impact bonds hold promise for improving the way social services are delivered in three main ways:

1. Social impact bonds increase accountability and transparency of public resources. Governments and/or donors only have to pay for successful programs based on results actually achieved, thereby enhancing value for money, ensuring responsible use of public resources and delivering an accurate record of what was achieved per dollar invested.

2. Social impact bonds facilitate adoption of innovative, cost-effective programs. By transferring implementation risk to investors, governments and/or donors can use social impact bonds to adopt innovative programs that would otherwise not have been financed through traditional channels.

3. Social impact bonds can help improve the efficiency of public resources by enabling greater investment in cost-effective prevention. Social impact bonds enable governments to finance prevention, in part, out of the savings generated by reducing expensive downstream treatment or remediation of social problems. For example, social impact bonds can finance crime prevention programs out of the savings generated by fewer incarcerations.

4. Governments can increase inter-agency collaboration and transparency and accountability.

Contact

To learn about participating in the social impact bond, contact
Michael Belinsky
mike.belinsky@instiglio.org