Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 2 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 2 (2022) - Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения»

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«Sandboxes» for Social Investments: how Social Impact Bonds Projects are Developing Globally

Ivan Smekalin

DOI 10.55140/2782-5817-2022-2-2-30-39

The impact investment market is growing all over the world, and its forms and types are becoming more elegant. If earlier investments in solving social problems could be more like spending CSR budgets — "give and forget", than the current state of the market dictates other rules. The new standard is accounting not only for invested funds but also for assessing the socio-economic efficiency of the results obtained. One of these «new» formats is the «SIBs» that came to Russia not so long ago — so-called from the English-language term Social Impact Bonds.

Ivan Smekalin

Analyst, Positive Changes Factory

TO TAKE, YOU HAVE TO GIVE

Social Impact Bonds are also known simply as social bonds (Weller & Pedersen, 2018). The phenomenon has other names as well, such as Pay for Success and Development Impact Bonds. Despite being called "bonds," these projects are not exactly bonds, but rather a subcategory of public-private partnerships. Social Impact Bonds are effectively a contractual and financial mechanism in which the return on investment occurs once the social effect is achieved.

Public-private partnerships are based on the interactions and commitments between three parties:

1. a public agency initiates the project and shapes the expectations for its social impact;

2. a contractor receives funding from investors and implements the social project to achieve the agreed results;

3. an investor provides capital for the contractor with the expectation of getting their money back from the state agency once the expected social impact has been achieved.

The complexity of social impact bonds is that they combine a service delivery model with project management, impact evaluation and an investment system (Andersen et al., 2020). While the key role for making decisions (and launching actual projects) in most cases belongs to public agencies, the projects themselves are funded and implemented by private-sector actors — and this creates grounds for controversy. Each party may have different interests, goals and performance indicators.

In particular, we can note the following potential contradictions present in social impact bonds (Weller & Pedersen, 2018):

1. public agencies tend to choose the lowest budget projects, which affects the quality of services provided;

2. this de-facto privatization of public services is hard to explain to the public: why not spend the money through the government institutions rather than channel it to private players?

3. during the project implementation phase, it is hard to choose between sticking to the original plan and being flexible to meet the goals;

4. greater risks for investors: under comparative risk levels, greater return can be achieved from investing under general market conditions than by dealing with the government.

MEDIATORS AND THEIR ROLE

It is important to note the role of mediators who handle the interaction within the triangle of stakeholders — the government, the contractor, and the investor. There are two types of mediators (Urban Institute, 2020): financial and expert. Financial mediators, also known as transaction coordinators, provide support for project planning, investor protection, and contract negotiation. Expert mediators review the project design, costs, and offer methods for researching the intervention's social impact.

The VEB.RF state corporation, one of the major social impact operators in Russia, represents (2021) the following list of stakeholders: the contractor, investor, public body, independent evaluator, and operator. This list correlates to the three key stakeholders and two mediators, as described above. However, the Russian mediator's role is somewhat limited compared to traditional expert mediators: specifically, it does not provide project review or assistance in designing the project prior to its launch. The Russian model also does not allow for a participant to guarantee the investor's interests, other than by the investors themselves. However, these two models are not the only options for implementing social impact bonds. Below we will examine project cases from different countries.

THE UK EXPERIENCE. DEVELOPING INNOVATION THROUGH AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH