The Aspire Social Impact Bond: How social impact bond financing can promote positive social and economic outcomes

Veronica Coram, Selina Tually, Leanne Lester, Michael Kyron, Paul Flatau, Ian Goodwin-Smith

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Abstract

Financing human service delivery through social impact bonds (SIBs) is the subject of some critical commentary in the academic literature, but this tends to be largely theoretical rather than empirically based. This paper presents empirical evidence of how SIB financing can promote positive social and economic outcomes for governments, not-for-profit providers, individual service beneficiaries and society more broadly. The paper presents some of the results of an evaluation of the Aspire SIB, which financed an innovative intensive case management program providing housing and wraparound supports over a 3-year period for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Aspire participants experienced significantly improved outcomes and decreased service needs, delivering downstream cost savings across several areas of government service delivery. This paper describes how the SIB financing mechanism underpinned the success of Aspire by promoting flexible, collaborative, outcome-focussed and data-informed responses to a challenging, multi-faceted social problem.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-20
Number of pages20
JournalAustralian Journal of Social Issues
Early online date1 Jul 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 1 Jul 2024

Keywords

  • avoided costs
  • homelessness
  • intensive case management
  • outcomes
  • social impact bond

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