Social Finance

The Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award supports five organisations that are addressing areas of significant social need through bold projects that promise lasting community benefit.

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.

7+ Pay It Forward funds

developed and launched, recycling place-based workforce trainings funds.¹

10,000+ people

served through impact finance projects focused on economic mobility.¹

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.

Project updates

FY2024

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.

FY2023

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.

FY2022

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

FY2021

Vision for the future

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.

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With the Macquarie 50^th 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

Data points on this page were provided by Social Finance as at August 2023.
Social Finance define a Career Impact Bond as a holistic model for financing education and training to help unemployed and underemployed people participate in the modern economy.

The Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award supports five organisations that are addressing areas of significant social need through bold projects that promise lasting community benefit.

7+ Pay It Forward funds

10,000+ people

Project updates

Vision for the future

Meet the other winners