Toby Eccles

Toby’s focus is on new initiatives for the organisation and innovation. He led teams that developed the social impact bond model, from initial concept to the first implementation at Peterborough prison; the first local authority social impact bond in Essex focused on children in care; designed the Social Outcomes Fund for the Cabinet Office, the first centrally pooled fund for impact bonds; catalysed development impact bonds in partnership with the Center for Global Development; and worked with the Inter-American Development Bank on impact bond strategies for Chile, Mexico and Brazil. He supported the creation of our Data + Digital Labs team, which he now leads, while also developing several initiatives including a focus on community entrepreneurship, race equity and how government can more effectively manage markets.

From 2005, he acted as secretariat for the Commission on Unclaimed Assets, which recommended the creation of a Social Investment Bank that later became Big Society Capital. Prior to this, he was Director of Research at ARK, a child focused foundation, where he built programmes around education in the UK and communities with high levels of HIV / AIDS in South Africa.

In the commercial world, Toby worked in corporate finance at UBS Warburg, and built a next generation internet protocols business for Data Connection, a leading UK software company.

In 2017 he was given an OBE for services to social investment.