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The Scoop on Social Impact Bond

I just came from an excellent meeting with local colleagues who lead some of the best known non profits in town.  We were talking about a number of things, but one topic was the emergence of social impact bonds (SIBs) as another method of financing social/health programs. Social Impact Bonds are very new and the first one occurred in Great Britain in 2010. Today, there are 14 social impact bond projects in the United Kingdom, one in Australia, and a couple or so in the United States (as of 2013).  There are none yet in Canada.

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Transformational Ideas Require Transformed Practice

INTRODUCTION

This piece is about our practice as community workers, our mindset, our tendencies to resist the transformative leap. Sometimes it feels like we are standing on the edge of convention, a wide chasm between us and the “New World,” and looking down at the gremlins of risk and failure.

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Vision without Execution is Hallucination

"Vision without execution is hallucination."  This quote by Thomas Edison has particular resonance in our Working Differently / Collective Impact communities.  For in many ways, these communities seek to accomplish transformative change by building on two visions: the aspirational outcome and the cross-sectoral means of achieving that outcome.  For this reason, carefully considering "how" this can be accomplished is vital. 

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Do you actually value (social) innovation?

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Drivers of Collaboration

Sometimes, collaboration stinks.

Okay, I imagine I have your attention now.

Yes, I am being overly dramatic. I guess what I really want to say is that sometimes a really good idea gets overdone, twisted up, misguided.  Collaboration is generally a good thing of course, but it seems sometimes we just do it or at least try to do it whether it is needed or not, whether or not we truly believe it makes sense. All of us know that sometimes we do it because funders require it. I called that “coerced collaboration."

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Challenging the Outcome of Outcomes

I wonder.

Have we have been hoodwinked. co-opted, and led to the altar of a false god – or at the very least, an imperfect one?

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