Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award
Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award funding is supporting Social Finance to develop innovative financing solutions to increase access to effective education and training programs. The organisation’s economic mobility work aims to prepare workers for jobs that lead to sustainable careers and a more equitable society.
In this video Stephanie shares how participating in a diesel technician training program supported by Social Finance helped her launch a promising career that provides for her and her son.
In FY2024, Social Finance US continued to scale its talent finance portfolio, expanding high quality career training to help unemployed and underemployed people participate in the modern economy.
Social Finance launched a Pay It Forward Fund in Colorado to prepare residents for in-demand, well-paying jobs in industries including IT, cybersecurity, and health care. Seeded with over $A12 million from multiple philanthropic sources, the Colorado Pay It Forward Fund provides different kinds of financing for learners, training providers, and employers. For each kind of financing, all loan repayments are recycled back into the Fund to support future learners.
In 2023, Social Finance launched the Social Finance Institute, a unique field-building platform. The platform leverages insights from practitioners and experts to develop networks, tools, and actionable resources to advance outcomes-based, impact-first funding models to measurably improve people’s lives.
In FY2023, the UP Fund launched its sixth investment; the first healthcare Career Impact Bond with Clinical Research Fastrack.
In partnership with the State of New Jersey and CEOs from leading companies, Social Finance launched the first Pay It Forward program in the US, initially focused on education and training for nursing, cybersecurity and HVAC/welding careers.
In FY2022, Social Finance’s UP Fund launched a follow on Career Impact Bond2 with American Diesel Training Centres (ADTC) to serve an additional 600 learners and to meet employer demand during an acute labour shortage.
With support from the $US100 million Google Career Certificates Fund, Social Finance designed an investment program which aims to help 20,000 learners from underserved communities land good jobs.1
In FY2021, Social Finance’s UP Fund supported four Career Impact Bonds to prepare learners for jobs in information technology, software development, user experience design and diesel technician training.1
Social Finance is driven by the belief that social and economic systems should enable all people to thrive, and the conviction that the most meaningful and measurable change is created in our communities when governments and markets work together.
With the Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award, we are building a bold set of impact investments to address the dual challenges of declining economic mobility and a growing skills gap in our economy.”
Tracy Palandjan
CEO, Social Finance
