What is Social Bridging Finance?

 

Social Bridging Finance (SBF) is a new grant funding model originally developed in Scotland by The Robertson Trust. It has been designed with the intention of enabling public services to reform and move resources towards preventative services through bringing together a working partnership of public sector, third sector and independent funders. It aims to ensure the long-term sustainability of services delivered by the third sector which can evidence success. It is very much in keeping with the principles of the Christie Commission (2011) of Performance, Prevention, People and Partnerships.

 

Why is Social Bridging Finance needed?

​

Now more than ever as the world enters a new tighter financial reality, SBF enables that critical move in public service delivery from reactive crisis driven services towards preventative long-term services.  The model supports a longer-term “invest to save” focus where the financial risk is transferred away from the public and third sectors to an independent funder. Given the lack of public resource to do anything new this has become even more important.  

​

The evidence from the model shows that it encourages the scale-up of evidence-based models of service which better meet the needs of beneficiaries and allows the public sector to be more strategic rather than reactive. Finally, the model helps supports long term sustainability of third sector organisations and services which can evidence their success.

 

How does it work?

​

Social Bridging Finance is a straight-forward model which enables grant funding from independent funding sources to support the initial demonstration phase of an evidence-based service, whilst also ensuring that the public sector sustains those which successfully meet agreed outcomes. The different stages of a Social Bridging Finance model are detailed below:

​

1. DESIGN: A working partnership is formed between a public sector agency, a third sector organisation and an independent funder to replicate an existing evidence-based model which has been trialled successfully elsewhere or at a small-scale in the existing geography. SBF should not be used to continue funding “business as usual”. This service should enable a move from reactive to preventative services and meet an identified need which the public sector body is prepared to fund longer term. The partners need to agree success criteria from the outset.

2. CONTRACT: A binding contract is signed between the partners to commit the funder to fund a trial period and for the public sector organisation to sustaining funding for the service for a specified period of time, if and only if, the pre-agreed success criteria are met. The standard contract template is “legal lite” and is only 10 pages, to minimise the set-up admin costs.

3. DEMONSTRATION:  After an allowance for an initial set-up phase the service is delivered for an agreed period of time, up to a maximum of 3 years. During this trial stage, which will be grant funded (this can be from a range of sources, including Trusts and Foundations, and even the public sector itself). Partners can adjust how the interventions are delivered, in order to ensure the best chance of meeting the agreed success criteria. A Project Board is established with senior representatives from the partners to ensure strategic level oversight of progress.

4. EVALUATION:  An “audit” is commissioned by the partnership and paid for by the independent funder at the outset of the trial period. This evaluation will make an informed judgement as to whether the agreed success criteria have been met at the end of the trial, but it is not an evaluation of the service itself.

5. SUSTAINABILITY:  If the external evaluator determines that the agreed success criteria have been met, then the contract determines the length of time for which the public sector organisation will sustain the service. If the trial period has not been successful, all partners ensure that they take learning from the process and walk away, thus the public sector commissioner faces no risk from the trial, as all initial risk is carried by the grant funders.

 

Diagrammatically the relationships between the partners can be represented as  

​

​

​

​

​

​

​
 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​