Board of Education member Henry Bienen took an unusual step at last month’s meeting: He voted against a plan that came down from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office.
The benefits of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have been discussed primarily in three ways. First, SIBs are a tool to raise finances to invest in social programming from non-government sources. The role of government is then to pay the investor if the investment in a social agency’s ability to provide a service (i.e. to achieve agreed outcomes) is fulfilled.