I was excited to see Christine Lagarde interviewed by the recently created Tri Sector Forum. TSF aims to identify and empower individuals who have the potential to become leaders in private, social, and public sectors. Ms. Lagarde will also be the MPP Class Day speaker at Harvard Kennedy School’s commencement address this year.
The interview: http://tri-sector.com/blog/item/lagarde.html
Patrick Lester at Driving Social Impact writes about some promising news for social services funding at the state level:
According to a report released May 2 by the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than half of U.S. states expect to end their current fiscal years with budget surpluses. The report is based on a survey of state budget officials.
The recovery is being led by an overall rebound in tax revenues. According to a separate report last month from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, state tax receipts have risen to their highest levels since the start of the recession in 2007. The gains have been highest in Midwestern states such as Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, and Michigan.
I’m happy to report that the Harvard Kennedy School Review, which I help run, just released its 2012 issue. Some of the great articles include:
England recently launched Big Society Capital as part of its effort to develop the social finance market. BSC is a billion-dollar fund that was capitalized with dormant accounts of UK’s largest banks, as well as with funds that the banks gave in order to improve their post-economic recession image in society. The bank’s mandate to maintain long-term sustainability requires it to generate enough revenue to cover at least the costs of operations. Its other mandate is to build the social finance market. These two mandates may clash and complicate the life of its managers. Many market-building investments may generate insufficient cash flow to fit under the sustainability mandate. Some of those may be investments to smaller organizations where the cost of the loan is greater than the risk-adjusted return.
BSC’s chairman is Sir Ronald Cohen, who helped start Social Finance UK, the organization that is implementing the first demonstration project for social impact bonds.
Notably, BSC is the world’s largest explicitly hybrid organization. It comprises three separate organizations.
Very excited to be profiled on the Harvard Kennedy School website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/students/accenture-award
“We founded Instiglio with the mission of empowering societies to discover, adopt and scale innovative solutions to social problems,” said Belinsky. “Our team united over an opportunity to improve drastically the delivery of social services in developing countries by adapting the social impact bond model to emerging markets. We are thrilled to combine our Kennedy school training and our development world experience (our team has collectively worked in over 20 countries) to durably improve social service delivery. ”
This brings back such good memories. I still remember the hectic days of creating this organization from scratch with my best friends during our sophomore year of college. DartMUN was the largest student-run conference the year we started it. And now it looks like it either is, or will soon become, the largest conference at Dartmouth. I’m so proud of all the people who have helped carry on the DartMUN tradition over the past six years.
High schoolers come to College for Model UN
Emily Brigstocke, The Dartmouth Staff
Monday, April 2, 2012
http://thedartmouth.com/2012/04/02/news/modelun
“Dartmouth Model United Nations hosted its seventh annual conference this weekend, drawing 500 students from 33 high schools across the country for the largest conference in DartMUN’s history.”
“Despite the serious aspects of the conference, the DartMUN staff also planned twists, such as the kidnapping of the prime minister of India from the Pakistani War Cabinet before the vote on a United Nations-sponsored cease-fire.”
I am so humbled to be part of a great team that received the Accenture Public Service Innovation Award last night at the Harvard Innovation Challenge. Our idea, which we call Instiglio, is to help governments in developing countries apply pay-for-success contracts (a k a social impact bonds) to improve service delivery in areas such as HIV/AIDS, youth gang participation, and contract teachers. The mission of Instiglio says it best: to empower societies to discover, adopt, and scale innovative solutions to social problems.
More about the award: www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-public-sector-innovation-award.aspx
More about our idea: www.instiglio.org
Media Mentions:
Social impact bonds expand across the UK
Vibeka Mair
Civil Society Finance
March 19, 2012
http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/finance/news/content/11844/social_impact_bonds_expand_across_the_uk
“The first social impact bond trial in Scotland has launched, one of six projects across the UK set to be supported by sponsoring agency the Department of Work and Pensions.”
Michael Belinsky 