Meet Phyllis Kulander Costanza, Co-Founder and President of OutcomesX, an innovative marketplace that is transforming social impact into an investable asset.

Phyllis, would you please tell us about yourself and your journey to becoming the celebrated social innovator you are today?

My background inspired my journey. I have worked for private companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and in state government. My personal experiences have led me to believe firmly that the way we are financing social enterprises needs to be revised for several reasons.

Firstly, small NGOs or community based organisations are at a considerable disadvantage. They need large grants or highly experienced grant writers and fundraisers to access the capital that the more prominent International NGOs typically receive. The level of inequality in funding in the sector is appalling.

Secondly, the NGO sector does not compete based on quality and price. Like everything else, it is time we started looking at organisations and asking questions about who delivers the best outcome, at the best price.

I have been involved in numerous outcomes-based financing initiatives over the last 15 years. We used to call these instruments social impact bonds. It is a way to finance outcomes by incentivising NGOs to deliver results, not just carry out activities.

For example an education project might have activities like building a school or training teachers which will result to improving language, literacy, numeracy, and children's learning. These social impact bonds would pay an investor a return when a nonprofit delivers outcomes like these for education. That is what inspired me to start OutcomesX, creating a marketplace to buy and sell social outcomes.

To continue reading the article, see the Cover Story on page 30 in NGO Whisperer here.