New White Paper explores how to combine innovative finance and sports for development

Applying the rigor of innovative finance mechanisms and leveraging Switzerland’s rich ecosystem of sports organisations and sustainable finance actors to sustain and scale-up sport, physical activity and active play interventions 

Two Swiss entrepreneurs, Philippe Furrer and Patrick Elmer, have come together to advocate the use of innovative finance mechanisms for the benefit of sports for development (S4D) and address some of the most pressing needs of global youth today: health, well-being, peace, education, employability, gender equality and more. It is no co-incidence that this White Paper has been launched on Olympic Day. Sport has been recognised as an important enabler of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the authors feel it is now time to leverage its universal power to accelerate the international community’s journey to meet the UN 2030 Agenda. 

The White Paper explores and introduces a number of best practices and experienced players in S4D as well as innovative financial mechanisms which have been road-tested in other development fields, such as health or education. For the authors, the documented success of some innovative financial instruments such as social impact bonds or social impact incentives is an invitation to take S4D beyond pure philanthropy and work around the first S4D Outcome Fund. 

Following the publication of this White Paper, the authors seek to engage sports organisations, investors and venture philanthropists to select the most effective interventions based on real data and scale them up by measuring and rewarding social outcomes.

Philippe Furrer and Patrick Elmer are (global) Swiss citizen-entrepreneurs from two different “industries” who met in late 2018 and agreed that something needed to be done to bring together the best of “their worlds”: sustainable finance and centuries of innovations in banking on the one hand, and the power of sport, physical activity, movement and active play to transform young people’s lives on the other. SF4D was born and the publication of this White Paper is the foundation stone of an exciting endeavor.

Join in the authors in a SportWorks Webinar on 30 June, 2pm (CET):
https://event.webinarjam.com/register/46/gwqqkux3?__s=4ozq8dswqvhxpsuapsoq

 Read the full, original news release in English and in French.