Building Digital Infrastructure for Impact Bonds (Outcome-Based Contracts) for Community Sport and Cultural Organisations

Community sport organisations and other cultural organisations (like libraries, museums and art galleries) generate tremendous social value for our communities (http://shura.shu.ac.uk/9596/1/review-social-impacts-culture-sport.pdf). A major proportion of these organisations in the UK rely on public funding and/or charity income for their financial sustainability, and following the COVID-19 economic crisis and the current recession, are struggling to access funding to maintain their financial health.

The aim of this project is to build the digital infrastructure that will make social financing solutions like social impact bonds (https://golab.bsg.ox.ac.uk/the-basics/impact-bonds/) accessible to these organisations - helping them access greater levels of funding by harnessing data about the social impact outcomes they are generating in communities.

Having already built the digital technology for producing real-time data about social impact being generated by community sport organisations on our SportFin platform (https://sportfin.io), we aim to use this grant funding to build the digital infrastructure for automating the impact bond lifecycle, so impact bonds can be accessible for community sport and other cultural organisations.