There are many local public services across the UK which significantly underperform their potential and are not being addressed effectively using traditional design and contracting methods. This tends to be in areas where service design or delivery needs to be personalised to each individual, and where individuals interact with multiple parts of the State (like homelessness prevention, support for people with long-term conditions and helping families stay together). These policy areas require collaborative design, flexible delivery and clear accountability to succeed and these ingredients are difficult to specify centrally from Whitehall. An Outcomes Partnership creates the conditions for real freedom to be devolved to local areas, but simultaneously dramatically improves data, learning, and accountability back to central government. It also delays payment by government, because they pay for the achievement of defined progress milestones (outcomes) after they have been validated, instead of paying up-front for specified inputs. Investors provide upfront working capital for the delivery to get mobilised and are repaid only when progress milestones and improvements in people’s lives are achieved.

Bridges Outcomes Partnerships (a not-for-profit subsidiary of Bridges Fund Management) has led the development of this approach globally, and Snowball invested in their pioneering outcomes funds. The funds support projects which improve the lives of underserved people. Examples include helping people with long-term health conditions through social prescribing and community asset-based support; supporting families with children at the edge of care, or who are in care, through systemic family therapy; helping people at risk of homelessness through a personalised approach to enter and sustain accommodation, employment, financial stability, and mental wellbeing.