I recently drafted an article for Etkiyap (Impact Investing Turkey)- Turkey's first impact investing platform, set up to advocate for and promote impact investing in Turkey.
In the article (currently available only in Turkish) I discuss lessons learned from the world's first Social Impact Bond (SIB): The Peterborough Prison One Service Program, which aimed to reduce recidivism among former young male inmates.
It's been eleven years since this first SIB and we've seen a surge of SIBs across the world, however, still mostly in the developed world. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) and Development Impact Bonds (DIBs) offer an innovative approach to structuring and financing interventions that brings an an evidence based and results focused approach to pressing social, environmental and economic problems. These structures tap into new financial resources that otherwise might not have been available to solve these problems and leverage private sector's know how by actively involving investors and companies as investors and implementers of programs.
However, the experience over the past years has been mixed and there are a lot of critical views on the contribution of impact bonds to solving problems. One such article is published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, A Critical Reflection on Social Impact Bonds. The authors, Michael J. Roy, Neil McHugh, & Stephen Sinclair, argue that "Far from being a win-win financial instrument, SIBs come with significant technical burdens and exemplify an ideological shift in welfare service provision."
The full article in Turkish can be accessed here. And more on what Etkiyap is doing to promote impact investing in Turkey can be learned on Etkiyap's website here.