Accelerating Funding
for Results

What is the Outcomes Accelerator?

The Outcomes Accelerator is a public-private, global initiative created to accelerate more effective testing, scaling and mainstreaming of outcomes-based financing approaches in the delivery of SDG impact. The Outcomes Accelerator works with stakeholders across the outcomes-based financing ecosystem - governments, development agencies, investors, services providers, intermediaries, and corporates.

The Outcomes Accelerator is an initiative of the Outcomes Finance Alliance (OFA) funded and supported by the UBS Optimus Foundation, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Swiss State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (SECO) in making outcomes-based financing approaches more efficient and mainstreamed and to move the market ecosystem toward maturity. Levoca serves as the Manager of the Outcomes Accelerator.

This initiative is founded on the recognition that outcomes-based approaches hold great promise for improving the effectiveness of donor and Government spending, but that funding remains highly fragmented, important institutional barriers and disincentives exist, and scale is required for effective demonstration.

 

Key Services Offered

The Outcomes Accelerator Solution

The Outcomes Accelerator offers three core products and services to partners to build the market

Pipeline Acceleration

Provide seed funding, expertise and match making to support the design and incubation of outcomes based finance instruments and programs.

Market Facilitation

Address systemic barriers to wider adoption and mainstreaming of outcomes approaches in support of the SDGs by promoting activities and collaborations that support, shape, influence, and enable the launch of high-quality transactions.

Capacity Creation

Promote access to technical assistance, expertise, systematize operational learnings and best practices in partnership with existing knowledge hubs.

Targeting Barriers to Scale

The Outcomes Accelerator was conceived to address the key barriers impeding the market and catalyze the market’s capacity to translate learning from pilots into replication and scaling of impact.

The barriers the Accelerator will help address include: 
  • Funding -- Fragmented funding lanscape, inadequate pipeline and lack of access to seed funding for early stage concept development
  • Information -- Small body of evidence on value-for-money of instruments vs. other instruments; no common learning agenda 
  • Skills & capacity -- Limited expertise inside commissioning organizatons; policies, systems, and processes not designed for OBF
  • Collective action -- No platforms to coordinate priorities and test instruments at scale
Funding Barriers
Funding allocated at small scale on a project-by-project basis.Inadequate pipeline aligned to funder priorities.Access to seed funding for early stage concept developmentRegulatory and legal barriers.
Information Barriers
Limited understanding of relative merits vs. other instruments.Small body of evidence on value-for-money of instruments and benchmarks for pricing and risk.No common learning agenda.Detailed transaction information not shared or available publicly.
Information Barriers
Limited expertise inside commissioning organisations.High transaction costs and long lead times create disincentives for teams to test.Policies, systems, and processes not designed for outcomes-based commissioning (e.g., budgeting, procurement, paying investor returns).
Information Barriers
Fragmented funding landscape.Uncoordinated strategy and no platform(s) to coordinate priorities and test instruments at scale.

Outcomes Accelerator Goals

The policy-level objective of the Outcomes Accelerator is to facilitate greater resource efficiency and effectiveness in achieving the SDGs for international development funding agencies and domestic Governments that utilize pay-for-success strategies.

The industry-level objective of the Outcomes Accelerator is to advance a thriving global market of viable stakeholders, including Government and institutional outcomes payers, service providers, evaluators, and private investors with the aim of delivering better and more cost-effective services targeting the SDGs.

The Outcomes Accelerator will be a participatory platform based on core principles of openness, transparency, inclusion, and consultative decision-making and strives to must meet the diverse needs of four sets of key stakeholders:

Outcome funding organizations

Including multilateral and bilateral funding organizations, private philanthropy, corporates and domestic governments.

Service delivery organizations

Including non-profit and for-profit organizations that implement outcomes-focused programs.

Market support providers

Including project developers, intermediaries, consultants, research organizations, law firms, and evaluators.

Investors

Including high-net worth individuals, development finance institutions, foundations, institutional and other investors, or providers of risk or working capital.

Over 40 public and private organizations working in outcomes-based finance have supported the design of the Outcomes Accelerator. The priorities and services offered by the Accelerator will continue to be refined to reflect stakeholder and market needs.

Roadmap to
Accelerator Launch

Targeting Barriers to Scale

The Outcomes Accelerator was conceived by address the key barriers impeding the market and catalyze the market’s capacity to translate learning from pilots into replication and scaling of impact.

Despite this growing interest outcomes-based financing approaches, the ecosystem remains in an early-learning phase.
Most transactions are a first-of-a-kind demonstration projects, often in a specific theme or geography, with long lead times. Outcomes payers, service providers and investors confront steep learning curves as parties gain experience. Donor agencies and domestic governments in developing countries remain constrained by low capacity, limited access to the skills and expertise and a range of institutional barriers and cultural disincentives that limit that testing and use of outcomes-based approaches.

Funding Barriers
Funding allocated at small scale on a project-by-project basis.Inadequate pipeline aligned to funder priorities.Access to seed funding for early stage concept developmentRegulatory and legal barriers.
Information Barriers
Limited understanding of relative merits vs. other instruments.Small body of evidence on value-for-money of instruments and benchmarks for pricing and risk.No common learning agenda.Detailed transaction information not shared or available publicly.
Skills & Capacity Barriers
Limited expertise inside commissioning organisations.High transaction costs and long lead times create disincentives for teams to test.Policies, systems, and processes not designed for outcomes-based commissioning (e.g., budgeting, procurement, paying investor returns).
Collective Action Barriers
Fragmented funding landscape.Uncoordinated strategy and no platform(s) to coordinate priorities and test instruments at scale.
Funding Barriers
Funding allocated at small scale on a project-by-project basis.Inadequate pipeline aligned to funder priorities.Access to seed funding for early stage concept developmentRegulatory and legal barriers.
Information Barriers
Limited understanding of relative merits vs. other instruments.Small body of evidence on value-for-money of instruments and benchmarks for pricing and risk.No common learning agenda.Detailed transaction information not shared or available publicly.
Information Barriers
Limited expertise inside commissioning organisations.High transaction costs and long lead times create disincentives for teams to test.Policies, systems, and processes not designed for outcomes-based commissioning (e.g., budgeting, procurement, paying investor returns).
Information Barriers
Fragmented funding landscape.Uncoordinated strategy and no platform(s) to coordinate priorities and test instruments at scale.
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