Factivist finance

In this chapter, I examine the intervention models and impact metrics of the three case study projects. Rather than adhering to a fixed set of features, these interventions reflect a mindset of conducting ‘field experiments’ that empirically assess outcomes. The emphasis on facts and evidence fosters a particular kind of knowledge about situations characterised by precariousness, namely the idea that the truth can be found in numbers. I delineate an aspirational ethics that moves beyond moral virtue or emotionally compelling narratives about distant sufferers—common in ‘feel-good investing’ and humanitarian reasoning—towards experimental methods that prove positive effects. Building on the neologism ‘factivism’—a mash-up of ‘fact’ and ‘activism’—I describe this conflation of benevolent advocacy, hard data, and financial risk-taking as ‘factivist finance’. Impact bonds recombine philanthropic, financial, ethical, and managerial rationalities into a programmatic approach to poverty reduction. Through its strict outcome focus, factivist finance reassures actors of the social value of their investments, immunising interventions against political confrontation and accusations of impact-washing. The ‘everydayness’ of such schemes is also central to the chapter, reflecting how they structure organisational routines through performance metrics, data collection, and IT-driven decision-making.