Social Impact Bonds

In the current climate of large public spending and budget deficits, initiatives of high social value or for disadvantaged groups risk becoming more difficult to fund or even fall by the wayside. New capital markets offering socially responsible investing, social outcome contracting (SOC) such as outcome financing and Social Impact Bonds (SIB), with thorough impact evaluations are pushing forward to meet prevailing social and economic needs. To make such public-private partnerships profitable, new configurations are needed.
This research project responds to this need. We examine how from combined forces of the academic institution, investors, social organisations, intended target groups and governments, at home and abroad, a powerful collaboration to optimise socially responsible impact outcome-driven policy in practice.
This goes very broad: a procurement mindshift: from procurement policy to partnership policy, variants of SIB models, outcome and guarantee funds, new investment opportunities and stakeholders, ...to strive for the structural design of a future-proof financing mechanism, complementary to existing forms of financing, that is easily implementable to cope with current issues.
This practice-oriented research works with concrete cases, in collaboration with local governments, to expose the barriers to implementation and, in parallel, on a system basis, in collaboration with policymakers, to shape a structure that simplifies the implementation of the financing mechanism.
Towards the end of the research period, we aim to maximise knowledge sharing and advice.