A lot of interesting things have been happening in the social impact bond space over the past several weeks. Here is a recap of three major events.

Early Education in New York City: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer proposed a social impact bond to expand Early Head Start, an early education program. According to the New York Times report of his proposal, the idea appears to have political motivation to counter the tax-the-rich proposal of Bill de Blasio, a New York public advocate. Early Head Start offers educational services to children ages 3-5 through 250 centers throughout New York City. The program has been evaluated through rigorous trials at the national level and found to positive results: “Compared with controls, Early Head Start parents were more emotionally supportive, provided more language and learning stimulation, read to their children more, and spanked less."

One of the biggest concerns about the applicability of the social impact bond model to Early Head Start is whether the program pays for itself through cashable savings at the city or state level. Existing designs of social impact bond programs (designs, since only one program is in operation) center on programs that generate government savings. This value proposition has made social impact bonds especially attractive as state struggle to fund social programs in a time of fiscal austerity. I will write more on early childhood social impact bond programs later.

Healthcare in New Jersey: Assemblyman Angel Fuentes (D-Camden/Gloucester) has introduced legislation to create program and studies and issues social impact bonds to improve healthcare to low-income residents. The bill does not propose a specific program, but rather appoints the NJ Economic Development Authority to study whether such a program is possible. The proposal has its own Twitter account at @NJ_SIB_Act.

Social investment in England: Across the pond, the first UK social investment bank Big Society Capital has announced its first round of funding. Big Society Capital is a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit organization that carries a government mandate to capitalize the social investment market in the UK on a sustainable basis. BSC invested $60 million into 12 providers of social finance. This set of investments includes $720,000 to Triodos Bank for its social impact bond program and the same amount to Think Forward for its social impact bond program. I analyze these investments in detail in subsequent blog posts.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend SOCAP, the Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco. I attended as a Social Entrepreneur Scholarship, which SOCAP graciously offers to a select number of social entrepreneurs for a full discount on the $1,300 ticket that other conference attendees have to purchase.

The conference highlighted the release of a report by Omidyar Network on impact investing titled Priming the Pump: The Case for a Sector Based Approach to Impact Investing. Attendees mentioned that each SOCAP conference centers on a particular issue or topic, with this year's focus on impact investing.

Here are some insights I had from my amazing time at the SOCAP conference.

1. Figure out your goal. SOCAP will overwhelm you if you do not prepare in advance by defining a goal and using that goal to choose what to do as well as what not to do. This is true for many large events. With over 1,600 participants, three days of panels, and side-bar presentations, meetings and receptions, doing everything at SOCAP is impossible. The three step solution should be a) define your goal, b) select meetings and panels that advance your goal the most, c) keep away from events and meetings that do not meet you goal.

2. Prepare for meetings. The easy thing is to create a pitch, perfect it, and deliver it ad nauseum. The hard thing is to learn about your audience and tailor your pitch to their interests. One investor might like the geographical focus of your work. Another might be interested in an innovative way you structure your financing to achieve your objectives. A third may be fascinated by your use of mobile technology in a development setting. The same pitch might excite one investor and bore another. You might get a second chance to approach that investor or her company, but you shouldn’t bet on it.

3. Pace yourself. I spoke with several social entrepreneurs who had audacious goals for day one of the three-day conference and were devastated when they failed to meet those goals. Not everything must happen on day one. One of my most unexpectedly productive meetings happened when I decided to share a cab ride to the airport with two people leaving the SOCAP conference who I had not met before. After the initial meet and greet in the cab, I quickly realized that they are impact investors whose focus aligns with that of a close friend’s social enterprise. Just like that – a connection, a call, and the start of a due diligence process. The lesson is not to lose energy and enthusiasm if the first day does not go as planned.

These lessons sound simple and mundane, but they bear repeating because it is so easy to forget them. I thought I knew them going into the conference, but still I made mistakes on each front and can do better next time.

Overall the conference was a useful window into social enterprise. I met former Echoing Green applicants whom I had judged as part of Echoing Green’s Social Investment Council. I met former professors who taught me business in developing countries at Harvard Business School. And I made new connections with entrepreneurs in South Africa, Japan and Singapore, who I may not have met otherwise.

Harvard Kennedy School's Center for International Development has launched a new research program, Building State Capability. The goal, as stated on their website, is to research "new strategies and tactics that can be used to escape capability traps and build the capability of public organizations to execute and implement."

The website features practitioners that build state capabilities, including Instiglio, the nonprofit I co-founded that advances social impact bonds in developing countries, and IDinsight. Research papers can be found here.

My Instiglio colleagues Michael Eddy, Avnish Gungadurdoss and I were recently published in the op-ed section of Portafolio, Colombia's Wall Street Journal. The article is available in Spanish here and in English here.

An excerpt from the article:

Social impact bonds hold promise for addressing some of Colombia’s most complex problems. With a youth unemployment rate over 19 percent governments increasingly focus on creating stable upward trajectories for young Colombian. These trajectories must resolve multifaceted and interconnected challenges that range from lack of money, to unstable families, to inadequate educational opportunities. [...] Colombia has an opportunity to become the first Latin American country to pilot social impact bonds, and spark policy innovation for the region and the world. At Instiglio, we hope to help Colombia realize that opportunity.