This article examines the implications of the financialization of social impact and the emerging social impact bonds (SIBs) market for socially engaged art practices. How do SIBs, which allow for investment in social impact metrics, shift the broader contexts through which the value of social impact is understood in art discourses? In the British context, recent projects by Assemble, Open School East and others do important social work, yet echo the logic of the social investment market by outsourcing social impact. Rather than dismissing socially engaged art initiatives as having been recuperated by financialized capitalism, I suggest the need to develop new ways of achieving a double reading of these works as they relate to - and upset the distinctions between - stakeholder and bondholder valuation.

Outcomes Based Commissioning (OBC) – for example, Pay for Success (in the US) or Payment by Results (in the UK) – has been suggested as a way to provide ‘more’ social services for ‘less’ public resources. Such commissioning is often linked with an innovative financing tool called a Social Impact Bond (SIB). Using data from the Social Finance UK Database and focusing on SIBs in the US and UK, we evaluate whether the SIB approach aligns with the theoretical predictions of social innovation. The results provide limited evidence that SIBs facilitate capital injections from the private sector into the production of social goods as well as facilitate parts of the process of social innovation – namely, piloting and scaling. We conclude that there is significant variation, both between the US and UK and within the US, in social innovation ecosystems and the role played by SIBs.