An assessment of social impact bonds and their applicability in Turkey

Social impact bonds (SETs) are a results-oriented approach to financing social services, typically a model in which a private investor provides upfront capital to a service delivery organization, which is then repaid by the government based on the achievement of results. Despite over a decade of experimentation, there is a critical gap in our understanding of how SETs work in practice and the implications of the model for public service delivery. Since the first social impact bond pilot was launched in Peterborough, UK, preliminary interim results from the program point to positive outcomes attributed to the implementation of the social impact bond. This study aims to evaluate the impact of SETs on societies, the emergence of the SET project in World implementations and whether its positive results are actually a result of the causality resulting from the implementation of the SET project or a by-product of the correlation that occurs simultaneously with the implementation of the project. The main objective of this study is to promote socially impactful bonds and to reveal their economic and financial contributions as well as their issuance processes, advantages and disadvantages. In addition, it is aimed to discuss whether the conditions for issuance of social impact bonds can be met in Turkey and their potential contributions in terms of these dimensions.