From Potential to Action: Bringing Social Impact Bonds to the US

Simply stated, a SIB is a new approach for expanding social programs. It is a partnership in which philanthropic funders and impact investors—not governments—take on the financial risk of scaling up. Nonprofits deliver the program; the government pays only if the program succeeds. Because the concept of SIBs is so new (the first and only SIB is being piloted in the United Kingdom), information about how—and how well—they could work is currently very limited. This report represents our initial contribution to the discussion.

(Laura Callanan, Jonathan Law and Lenny Mendonca, McKinsey & Company, May 2012)