Impact & Results

Tri-Sector’s collaborative approach, thorough research, and thoughtful contributions always provided useful guidance and added capacity to what was, then, a small and very under-resourced team. Tri-Sector’s contribution, in combination with my team, with a shared vision and complementary skill set, no doubt accelerated our progress and set us up for future success.

With the support of the Lorinet and TL Whang Foundations, the YMCA of Singapore had the privilege of partnering with Trisector to launch the first social impact guarantee in Singapore. An innovative financing model, the project allowed the YMCA of Singapore to conduct “R&D” on one of our well-established programmes – Project Bridge, VaSSP. This programme had been running for almost 10 years and with the depth of experience, the practitioners had been wondering if they are able to improve client outcomes with some changes to the interventions. However, as the proposed interventions required more resourcing, the team found it difficult to put their practice wisdom to test. The funds raised via SIG provided the resources needed for the practitioners to test out the improvements with the risks undertaken by one of the funding partners through the form of a guarantee. The experience empowered the practitioners to test out their practice wisdom in an evidence-based manner, resulting in an improved intervention model and enhanced practitioner competency.

We have been working with Tri-Sector Associates for the past couple of years. The team is always professional and enjoyable to work with. They have helped us to develop innovative financial mechanisms and enabled us to sharpen our programmatic approach. We would highly recommend Tri-Sector Associates as a flexible, thorough and collaborative partner.

Collaborating with the Tri-Sector team has been a really great experience.
We value the Tri-Sector Team's dedication, expertise, and professionalism in collaborating with our grantees to distill and expand established models, thus extending their impact to reach a greater number of individuals in need.

Tri-Sector Associates has contributed a lot for the introduction and development of Pay for Success and Social Impact Bonds in Japan. They have taken an important role in raising awareness, promoting understanding, and building capacity in the Japanese PFS/SIBs sector, primarily through the delivery of seminars and workshops. When they first came to Japan several years ago, PFS and SIBs were still new in Japan, so Tri-Sector Associates' presentation on the significance of PFS and SIBs while introducing leading examples from overseas was very meaningful, especially in promoting understanding among government officials. Now that the PFS Promotion Office has been established in the Cabinet Office, a foundation has been laid to promote PFS in Japan as a whole. SIIF itself has participated in and invested in eight SIB projects to date and each new deal has been improved to maximize its impact by leveraging the learnings from our partnership with Tri-Sector Associates. There are now more than 100 PFS projects across the country, and Tri-Sector Associates has been instrumental in helping to shape the market in the early years. As SIIF's goal is to become an ecosystem builder for impact investing, we are grateful to have Tri-Sector Associates as a partner to keep us updated on the latest insights and to discuss the next steps with us.

TSA walked along with us and our partners for nearly three years in preparing and implementing the first-ever Pay for Success program in Hong Kong . During this period, TSA has provided us with invaluable and practical insights, helping us understand the important principles of PFS, overseas experiences that are good references to Hong Kong. Our program aims to enhance the Chinese language proficiency of non-Chinese speaking kindergarten students, thereby increasing their capacibilities and achieving social inclusion in a long term. The process has not been easy, as the concept of PFS is still new in Hong Kong. We need Kevin and Sikai's professional assistance to address the questions of commissioner, panelists, and impact investors. In addition, shortly after the program's launch, we encountered the COVID-19 pandemic. The kindergartens we collaborated with had to suspend classes or switch to online learning, and this unexpected challenge caught us off guard. Fortunately, we received collaborative support from Kevin and Sikai to modify the plan and help us answer the commissioner and investors' questions. Thanks to their assistance, our program was able to be successfully completed. I sincerely recommend TSA's services.