Redefining Value: Innovative Finance for Development 

From Outcome-Based Finance to Tradable Impact.

$185 billion

Outcome-based financing market

100+

Organizations contributing to this initiative

Making markets work for social and environmental impact

As policymakers push to increase corporate accountability towards social issues, companies are struggling with increasing regulatory burdens and a lack of solutions to address material social issues at scale. At the same time, the policy toolkit lacks options for market-based incentives towards people and planet-positive action.

The Innovative Finance initiative by the Schwab Foundation, in partnership with the World Economic Forum, SK Group's Center for Social Value Enhancement Studies, Bayer Foundation, and an advisory group of 100+ leading organisations explores how companies can use innovative finance mechanisms to address social issues at scale and how tradeable impact - social outcomes that are economically valued, sold and exchanged - can positively shape the global economy and unlock growth.

PRIVATE SECTOR

Addressing material social issues and creating new markets

Innovative finance mechanisms allow companies to address material social issues in supply chains and develop new, impact-first business models. 

PUBLIC SECTOR

A novel policy option for the green and technological transitions

Market-based incentives have the potential to address key challenges of current sustainability regulation.

COLLABORATION AND BLENDED FINANCE

Aligning incentives across sectors and stakeholders groups

Innovative finance for impact aims to standardise and incentivise impact, aligning objectives across different sectors and stakeholder groups.

NEW REPORT

Redefining Value: Towards Tradeable Impact

By transforming verified social outcomes—such as improved education, health, or caregiving—into economic value, tradeable impact creates new financial incentives for social enterprises, businesses, investors and governments. This report outlines a practical blueprint for designing impact markets.

INNOVATIVE FINANCE TODAY

How companies can pay for results and social outcomes that are material to their sustainability challenges.

The 2025 report "Beyond Compliance" outlines how innovative finance solutions, including outcome-based funding (OBF), link financial rewards to measurable social and environmental outcomes. It demonstrates how businesses can leverage these mechanisms to mitigate and directly address social risks, drive product innovation, improve workforce skills, and build sustainable supply chains, creating competitive advantages while addressing critical societal challenges. 

Read the report

|

January 2025

THE FUTURE OF INNOVATIVE FINANCE

Redefining Value: Towards tradeable impact

Read the Report

|

June 2025

Impact credits AND currencies

A conceptual framework for impact currencies

Read the Whitepaper

|

June 2025

Existing mechanisms, addressing today's sustainability challenges

Innovative Finance holds promise to address economic and operational challenges for companies as they navigate the sustainability transformation. A variety of mechanisms that pay an organization for the outcomes  that it achieves have been developed and deployed globally. The maturing market enables companies to deploy pay-for-results mechanisms.

Case studies and examples

A range of organizations have used innovative finance and outcome-based funding to address social issues at scale.

CASE STUDY

Social Progress Credits

Since 2015, the SK Group has worked with 400+ social enterprises who have created over $354 million in social performance through the Social Progress Credit program. 

Aceli Africa

“Aceli” is a facility aimed at addressing the SME financing gap in the agricultural sector across Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

Scale: $152M in Loans

ADTC

American Diesel Training Centers partnered with Social Finance to launch a $4.7 million Career Impact Bond and address the US diesel technician shortage.

Scale: $4.7M investment

AngloAmerican SLB

Anglo issued its first Sustainability-Linked Bond to align financial metrics with sustainability goals such as GHG emissions and social performance.

Scale: $745M bond volume

BNP Paribas SSL

BNP Paribas has developed a $300M lending strategy to promote environmental and social impact through sustainability-linked loans (SSLs). 

Scale: $300M USD in loans

Bonds4Jobs

Yellowwoods' Bonds4Jobs supports unemployed youth through skilling and job placements in growth sectors like tourism, agro-processing, and digital.

Scale: $8.6M investment

CGM & ImagineWW

Common Good Marketplace partnered with Lifeline International to serve over 4 million children per year across all 6,000 public primary schools in Malawi

Scale: $176k outcomes payments

CGM & LifeNet

Common Good Marketplace partnered with LifeNet to provide health access to low-income rural and peri-urban populations through a health center network.

Scale: $167k outcomes payments

CGM & Miracle Feet

Common Good Marketplace partnered with MiracleFeet to increase access to essential health services, particularly clubfoot treatment in Malawi.

Scale: $167k outcomes payments

DIOM

ImpactScope is building a Decentralized Impact Outcomes Marketplace through web3 technology to build key infrastructure for tradeable impact. 

Scale: Not yet launched

IFC & PepsiCo

The IFC GTSF program provided $75 million to PepsiCo Mexico to offer financing to its suppliers in exchange to achieve social impact objectives.

Scale: $1bn total facility

Kenya Health Outc.

Kenya Health Outcomes Partnership is designed to provide access to sexual and reproductive health services for 430,000 girls at the age 15-19 years.

Scale: $7.3M outcomes payments

SDG Outcomes Fund

UBS & Bridges launched the SDG Outcomes Fund, a $100 million fund designed to invest in OBF programs to deliver SDG-aligned outcomes in LMICs.

Scale: $100M fund size

SIINC for Skills

Roots of Impact partnered with Sprints to bridge the tech skills gap and combat youth unemployment in Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Scale: $285k outcomes payments

Potencia Patagonia

The TechnoServe initiative provides SME trainings and derives 10% of its budget from results-based finance. Participating SMEs increase revenues by 155%. 

Scale: $262k outcomes payments

Toco

Toco is a carbon-backed currency, with one "toco" backed by one ton of carbon reductions. It transforms carbon credits into a store of value.

SCALE: $8.8M USD investments

Village Enterprises

The Village Enterprise Development Impact Bond was the first impact bond directly targeting poverty alleviation through 4,000+ microenterprises. 

Scale: $4.3M outcomes funding

Wecyclers Outcomes

The SDG Outcomes fund partnered with Unilever and Wecyclers to fund a scalable plastic waste management solution for livelihoods in Nigeria.

Scale: $2M outcomes payments

Wildlife Conservation Bond

The Wildlife Conservation Bond was launched to address the urgent need for private capital in biodiversity conservation. 

Scale: $150M investment

Resources and networks

Organizations that are are interested in exploring innovative and outcomes-based funding can tap into a broad set of tools, resources, and networks.

Government Outcomes Lab

Hosted by the University of Oxford

Since 2018, The Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) is a research and policy center based in the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. It is created as a partnership between the School and the UK Government. Its role is to investigate how governments partner with the private and social sectors to improve social outcomes. 

Impact Bond Dataset

Hosted by INDIGO

The Impact Bond Dataset provides interactive maps to find data about active and previous impact bonds at their various stages of development. Users can explore different policy areas that impact bonds are addressing, as well as their timelines and networks. Data is collected on a rolling, quarterly basis through the INDIGO Peer Learning Group. 

Other Datasets and Tools

Provided by GO Lab and INDIGO

The Outcome Fund Directory is a searchable database of outcome funds with standardized variables about fund characteristics. The Pipeline Dataset highlights upcoming outcome-based financing projects for interested parties.  The experimental SyROCCo machine learning tool provides a searchable database of academic and grey literature on outcomes-based contracting. 

Outcomes Financing Alliance

Supported by UBS Optimus Foundation, FCDO and SECO

Since 2018, the Outcome Finance Alliance (OFA) has served as a forum for organisations interested in paying based on results. OFA members have collaborated to launch concrete initiatives and address mainstream pay-for-success financing approaches.

Outcomes Accelerator

Conceived by the Outcomes Financing Alliance, managed by Levoca, funded by UBS Optimus, FCDO, and SECO

The Outcomes Accelerator is a global public-private initiative to accelerate more effective testing, scaling and mainstreaming of OBF. It offers pipeline acceleration, market facilitation, and capacity creation for outcome payors and implementing organizations.   

Impact-Linked Community Hub

Developed by Roots of Impact

The ILF Community Hub provides knowledge, training and exchange on impact-linked financing mechanisms.  It features a searchable knowledge center, curated case studies, reports, a training catalog and bi-monthly webinars.

Challenges of Outcome-Based Funding

Companies and regulators need to consider key challenges in outcome-based funding, specifically those linked to its limitations for systemic change. 

Impact Transactions

OBF tends to focus on impact “transactions” – an overly simplistic, linear approach to impact from input to output that, if not used carefully, risks only addressing symptoms while reinforcing inherently unjust structures.

Addressing Symptoms

Because of its ability to scale solutions, OBF can also scale incomplete solutions that only address the symptoms of social issues. For example, a solution to scale waste collection might oversee the need to address waste at the source.    

Systemic Change

OBF tends to be ill-suited to inspire radically new approaches. It therefore needs to go hand in hand with bold action to explore truly systemic solutions. OBF can help to scale these solutions once they are proven to be impactful.

Unlocking sustainable growth through tradeable impact 

Income and opportunity disparity stands alongside the climate emergency and nature loss as one of the biggest threats to society and business. It is identified as a systemic risk, threatening societal and economic stability amongst business and public sector leaders alike. 

Limited toolbox

Income and opportunity disparity stands alongside the climate emergency and nature loss as one of the biggest threats to society and business. It is identified as a systemic risk, threatening societal and economic stability amongst business and public sector leaders alike. 

However, the political environment for additional regulation is challenging. Companies and consumers are already questioning existing policies as negative externalities (emissions) and indirect costs (reporting compliance) are increasingly priced into products and services (“climate inflation”). To date, the policy toolkit offers little options for market-based incentives to encourage positive climate or social action rather than punish adverse behavior.

Advantages to tradeable impact
  • Market efficiency through price discovery and resource allocation
  • Standardization that enables outcome comparison and transparency
  • Scale through increased private capital and liquidity
  • Sustained funding flows based on verified, auditable outcomes
Unique challenges
  • Greater complexity in standardizing complex social outcomes
  • Higher context-dependency of impacts across geographies 
  • More challenging attribution and verification
  • Limited regulatory drivers of market demand

Imagining Tradeable Impact: The "Carbon Coin"

Kim Stanley Robinson’s bestselling climate fiction book "The Ministry for the Future" features a utopian version of tradeable impact for carbon through the “carbon coin”. The coin incentivizes an entire economy towards climate action; this fictional story is based on the real-world concept of “Global Carbon Rewards”, developed by Dr. Delton Chen and his team.

Promising progress

Despite its unique challenges, there is a maturing sector of innovative finance, addressing some of the key barriers towards tradeable impact, paving the way for its gradual implementation.  

Communities and legitimacy

This initiative follows several core principles, chief amongst them are a community-first approach and a strong requirement for legitimacy. This means our work focuses on creating solutions that allow communities and proximate leaders to define impact in a bottoms-up approach. And it furthermore priorities a process to identify organisations with democratic legitimacy to shape and further the concepts of tradable impact.  

Supported by

This initiative is made possible by the Center for Social Value Enhancement Studies and supported by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Default image

Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship

© 2026 All rights reserved
Privacy Policy & Terms of Service