Social Investment / Fund Manager Extension [Prototypes]

Prototype Data Visualization 1 shows the actual payments made by the outcome payer (e.g. a local government commissioner) expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible outcome payments, over the life of a project. In Data Visualization 1, 2 and 3, each project is shown by a coloured line that extends from left to right horizontally (on the x axis) to the anticipated or actual end of the contract (depending upon whether the contract is ongoing or completed). The point marked with a cross is the current date. At the end of the line there is an icon, which is a square for completed projects or a triangle for ongoing projects. 

The x-axis represents time since the start of the project in days. The start of the project is taken from “Date Outcomes Contract Signed” and the end of the project is taken from and “Date of Completion of the Service” data, which are variables on the General Overview tab of the INDIGO Impact Bond Dataset V2 Spreadsheet. (Future work may include capturing an “Anticipated Final Payment Date”, which could be used as the end date.) 

The y-axis represents the outcome payments that the outcome payer has made as a percentage of the maximum outcome payments available under the contract. Data on actual payments are taken from the “Transactions" tab where transactions are from the outcome payer. The maximum payments the project can achieve is from “Maximum Potential Outcome Payment” in the general overview tab. 

The line moves up vertically (on the y axis) showing the percentage of outcome payments accumulated over time. If a project is wholly successful, we would expect it to reach 100% by the end date showing maximum outcomes have been achieved. 

Therefore, this visualisation shows how outcome payments are distributed throughout the life of the contract. The shape of the line will depend both on project performance against payable outcomes and the contract’s emphasis on ‘Final’ outcomes (that may take a long time to achieve and measure).  

In this version of Prototype Data Visualization 1, we show outcome payments on the Cornwall Frequent Attenders project (INDIGO-POJ-0167). The visualization shows that the commissioner, Cornwall County Council, had paid 23% of the project’s maximum potential payments by Day 784. The project extends until Day 2223 (i.e. 6 years). In other words, the project has been set up and delivered two years of service, but the commissioner has paid less than a quarter of the maximum outcome payments.  

Prototype Data Visualization 2 represents the flow of capital in a contract between the investor and provider in USD over the life of the contract including investment and repayment. 

All four projects are ongoing, and it is BII’s plan that the line in each project will eventually move up above zero USD – i.e. that there would be net positive return on investment.  

The x-axis represents time since the start of the project in days. The y-axis represents transaction amounts between investor and provider in USD. Negative values indicate a net flow of capital from the investor to the project provider. Positive values indicate flow of capital/returns paid to the investor. The data for this graph comes from the General Overview tab, where we take the “Date of Completion of the Service” data, and the “Transactions“ tab, where we take data related to investment and repayment. 

Therefore, this visualisation represents the behavior of the investment timeline in a live project (from the perspective of a social investor). At the beginning of the project, we can observe that the value of investment is negative: this means that the social investor has invested some resource (either debt or equity) and has not started to be repaid yet. As time goes by and outcomes are achieved, the investor starts to receive some return. We expect the line to go up every time the provider repays either capital or interest to the investor. This is usually aligned to when outcomes are expected to be achieved by the provider but outcomes payments are not shown directly on this visualization. 

In this version of Prototype Data Visualization 2, we show the flow of investment and repayment for four projects: Street Impact Brighton (INDIGO-POJ-0158), Cornwall Frequent Attenders (INDIGO-POJ-0167), Pyramid Project (INDIGO-POJ-0194) and The Skill Mill (INDIGO-POJ-0195). This visualization shows that for the Street Impact Brighton project, 2 ½ years into a 3-year project the investor has not yet been fully repaid.  

As this is a live project the expected J-curve over the investment timeline is incomplete. One limitation of this visualization is that it focuses on the financial return which does not show the full picture for a social investor who has to consider both risk and return of impact alongside the financial. For example, a project would not be considered ‘successful’ if the financial investment was returned above the initial value of capital invested but this was to the detriment of anticipated impact to be achieved. 

Prototype Data Visualization 3 represents the flow of capital in a contract between the investor and provider in USD with the addition of technical assistance provided by the investor calculated in USD, over the life of the contract.  

In addition to financial transactions, Prototype Data Visualization 3 incorporates the cost of technical assistance provided by the investor to the provider or commissioner. 

The x-axis represents time since the start of the project in days. The y-axis represents transaction amounts between investor and provider in USD including investment and capital or interest repayment. The flow of capital and technical assistance from the investor towards the provider is expressed as negative values while the flow towards the investor is expressed as positive values. The data for this graph comes from the General Overview tab, where we take the “Date of Completion of the Service” data, and the “Transactions “tab, where we take data related to investments. This technical assistance has been calculated as a total by time spent per day on technical assistance activities, such as business planning, impact management, coaching/mentoring etc. 

In this version of Prototype Data Visualization 3, we show the flow of investment and repayment into The Pyramid Project (INDIGO-POJ-0194) with the inclusion of technical assistance. By comparing Visualization 2 and 3, we can see that the investment (Visualization 2) is approximately $257K USD and when the cost of technical assistance is added (in Visualization 3), the total investment to support the SOC is $281K USD, showing the in-kind cost of TA at $24K USD. (BII has calculated their technical assistance ‘cost’ at a proxy rate of £565 per day for the Pyramid Project (INDIGO-POJ-0194) project. This has been taken as an estimated rate using a contract awarded to Traverse22 for their provision of TA as a benchmark. Rates for technical assistance will vary widely in the sector across social investors and intermediaries, e.g. many intermediaries would charge £700-£1200 per day for senior ‘Director level’ support to projects. BII is still iterating for the most accurate proxy day rates for the provision of technical assistance and improving accuracy of measuring technical assistance days.  

Prototype Data Visualization 4 represents the variety and quantity of technical assistance (TA) provided by the investor (BII) on each contract. This is how BII has chosen to depict their provision of TA, and demonstrates the TA provided by BII for one specific project. This does not relate to all social investors in terms of levels of provision of TA, or ways of describing TA. In this version, this is showing TA provided at the pre-contract phase only. 

Each project will be a vertical bar on the x-axis. (In the current version, there is only one project, so only one bar.) The y-axis shows the number of days that the social investor spent providing TA to either the provider or commissioner. The data come from the “Technical Assistance Details” tab.  

In this version of Prototype Data Visualization 4, we show the different types of technical assistance provided by the investor for the Pyramid Project (INDIGO-POJ-0194). Different colors are used to represent the different types of TA provided (from the same list of TA types in Graph 3). 

This shows that the majority (19 days) of the technical assistance was spent on “Revenue Strategy – Business Planning”. Some examples of these types of TA are: practical support with fundraising, developing the impact strategy and theory of change, and business model development. The full list of TA categories developed by BII and the GO Lab is in the INDIGO Data Dictionary. 

Feedback on each of these prototype data visualizations is very welcome. See the top of this webpage for links to feedback tools and our email.