Outcomes funds: A path to scale
Outcomes funds sit at the intersection of programmatic and results-based approaches to the distribution of development assistance.
The evolution of the impact bond market in the UK provides useful lessons on how to increase the size and speed-to-market for outcomes-based funding interventions. In the UK, central Government funding was pooled into flexible, thematic‘outcomes funds’from which a series of programs could then be financed. Six years later, lessons are emerging that could help inform the evolution of DIBs.
This paper summarises Social Finance’s views on how a shift to outcomes funds could retain the fundamental rationale of impact bonds in improving accountability for aid outcomes, while doing so at scale.