Discussion about Social Impact Bonds is really hot right now.  SIBs have the ability to reward nonprofits for being innovative and for achieving measurable and replicable success.  But will they remove funding that would have been philanthropically given?  And will smaller nonprofits be left out in the cold?

To find out more, I attended last week’s Social Innovation Forum hosted by Root Cause.  The featured speaker was Jeffrey Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  After Liebman’s opening remarks, a panel of experts discussed SIBs and how they might affect nonprofits.

Liebman provided a very simple graph to illustrate the flow of money in a SIB, which looked something like this:

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:  A nonprofit (or more probably, a collaboration of nonprofits) works with a bond-issuing entity to raise funds to solve a social problem.  Investors are approached by the bond-issuing entity and the investors provide working capital to the bond-issuer.  Investors are guaranteed a rate of return if the project succeeds, and the return on investment is likely gauged to the project’s risk of success.  (If the project fails, investors lose their money).  When the project is completed and has met performance targets, the government pays the bond-issuing entity, which pays back the investors their initial investment plus interest.

It’s a win-win-win.

1. The problems solved are ones the government would have funded anyway (reduced recidivism, for example, or after-school reading programs).  But with SIBs, the government only pays when there is demonstrated success, lessening government waste.
2. Venture philanthropists and foundation leaders have a creative tool for their investment portfolio to both fund programs and reap a return on their philanthropic investments which they can then use to seed another venture.
3. Nonprofits with proven success in their field of expertise have another pool of potential support to draw from.

Jeffrey Liebman calls SIBs a “Pay-For-Success” program, and it’s easy to see why.  As he explained, SIBs improve nonprofit performance and lower cost to the government; they accelerate the adoption of new solutions that are broadly replicable; and there is more rapid learning of what works and what doesn’t.

So what are the problems with a Pay-For-Success program?

Well, there are a lot of nonprofits out there and competition for dollars is already fierce.  According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, over 1.6 million charities registered with the US IRS in 2011. Granted, about 100,000 are foundations and a little over 500,000 are professional associations, fraternal organizations, chambers of commerce, etc.  Still, that leaves about a million nonprofits vying for philanthropic support and not all of them will be candidates to participate.  Also, SIBs won’t work for every type of nonprofit.

The likely participants will be collaborations of nonprofits working together to creatively solve a specific social problem.  They will provide new solutions with the potential for high net benefits and will be able to provide measurable outcomes.  The populations they serve will be well-defined and there will be a reliable comparison group.

Won’t this mean dollars formerly allocated to philanthropy will be used for SIBs?

Panelist Tracy Palandjian of Social Finance Inc. commented that SIBs wouldn’t cannibalize philanthropic dollars because a foundation could invest in SIBs from the 95% of their investment corpus rather than from their 5% annual distribution.  SIBs become both another investment vehicle and a way to further a foundation’s vision and mission.

One forum participant, a representative of a foundation observed “isn’t it the point to cannibalize money from underperforming nonprofits to fund those that are producing results?”

What is clear is that all nonprofits – those struggling for money merely to survive as well as those that are well-established – will need to start measuring their impact on the communities they serve if they aren’t already.  Today’s donors already expect to see a nonprofit’s results clearly outlined but a social impact bond-holder will require it, and it will be the bond-issuer’s job to track the venture’s success.  Will there be a move within our industry to set standards for the metrics that are tracked?

As a professional in this field, the idea that we researchers will be helping our organizations create the most logical metrics and use that data to improve service delivery is exciting to me.  But as cool as that is, and even though there is already one test-tube SIB in place in the UK, I can’t get too excited yet.

The biggest roadblock?

The biggest problem could be politics.  Most projects that a SIB would cover would likely be funded over one or more election cycles.  What happens if the next person in office decides that they don’t want to honor the previous office-holder’s bond agreement?

In an era where Congress can’t seem to get it together over the simple task of running its daily business, what chance does a new initiative – however fiscally sound, however cost-saving – have?

Governor Deval Patrick of my home state of Massachusetts was the first to formally seek to explore SIBs in May of this year.  We’ll see if he leads us to create the first one in the US.

RootCause wisely videotaped some of the key segments of this fascinating forum.  Have a look to learn more!

Read more here about Social Impact Bonds and Impact Investing (which apparently goes back to the Civil War!) from the Harvard Business Review’s blog article written by Chris Meyer and Julie Kirby.

My friend Chris Carnie at Factary in Bristol, England gave me a scoop that I am excited to share:  Factary is releasing a white paper today on venture philanthropy in the UK and Europe titled The Venture Philanthropists; A Review of Venture Philanthropy Funds in the UK and the People Behind Them.

What makes this study different is that it is written by someone on the inside: Chris is a member of the Finance and Fundraising Committee of the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) and works closely with members of the venture philanthropy (VP) community.  This fascinating white paper focuses on the specifics:  Who they are.  How much they give.  What they give to. And most importantly, the keys to involving them.  I asked Chris a few questions:

HELEN BROWN: Chris, how long have you been following this topic and what kind of access have you gotten to the real story?

CHRIS CARNIE: We’ve been tracking venture philanthropy in Europe since it started. I got interested when one of the founders of VP in Europe attended a training course I gave years ago; he came from a private equity background, and wanted to know more about how the nonprofit sector worked. I spent some time with him, and then got to attend the first conference on VP in Europe, in Amsterdam in 2004. Since then, I have stayed involved and now serve on the Finance and Fundraising Committee of the European Venture Philanthropy Association, EVPA.

I’m interested in VP for lots of reasons. First, it has attracted some of the cleverest people I have ever met. People who are happy to throw all of the old ideas out of the window and build something completely new, creating social change in ways that are truly inventive. Second, it reaches a section of the community that has, historically, been very hard to get to – the private equity, City of London [financial district] people. Traditional “charity” is not very attractive to these people, but VP fits perfectly with the way they think. Third, well, when you get invited to speak at a private conference in Venice or Luxembourg, it’s hard to resist…

HB:  So what makes this new white paper a must-read?

CC: It’s a 70-page report on venture philanthropy in the UK. We’ve focused on the 130 or so people in the UK who have led and supported the growth of VP in the UK. The typical venture philanthropist was born in 1960 – so the median age is 51 – and is in private equity.  Eight out of ten VP trustees are male, and the most common source of women on VP boards is from the nonprofit sector.

He’s likely to be wealthy, and in fact the VP community have attracted a high proportion of people of wealth – across just 11 VP funds, we’ve counted 24 who feature in the UK’s best known wealth listing, the Sunday Times Rich List.

There are currently 11 full VP funds in the UK. I’m saying “currently” because the growth rate of VP in Europe has been extraordinary. The EVPA has grown membership 25 times in the last 6 years. They are supporting a very wide range of causes – there’s a shared interest in youth and education, but they are backing health, clean energy, HIV/AIDS too, both in the UK and overseas.

HB: But there are only 11 of these funds?  Why are they so important?

CC: That’s one of the keys to understanding this community of philanthropists – their influence is enormous. What’s happening is that large-scale foundations in Europe are taking a strong interest in the VP model. A number of the heavyweights have started venture funds within the umbrella of the larger foundation: an example in England is Charities Aid Foundation which runs a VP fund called Venturesome.

HB: Is that the future of VP?

CC: In part, yes. The VP model is about scale – growing small, high-impact nonprofits into bigger ones. In the UK we’re just at the start of that process (the first VP fund was set up here in 2002, four years after the Silicon Valley Venture Fund became the first VP in the US).  But we’re going to see stronger growth as the large foundations get on board. We’re also going to see traditional foundations copying the impact measurement tools that the VP community has developed. There will be continued growth in this sector and much of that growth will be international – the VP community has been very good at building links across Europe and the United States. Their conferences and meetings are multi-lingual affairs.

HB:  Thanks Chris for this sneak peek into the white paper.  For more information or to purchase the report for £125 contact research@factary.com. Chris will be speaking on this topic for ShareTraining on April 12.