Seen to be doing good. How does a donor measure social returns?

The challenge with this program for donors is that there is no “end outcome” - instead the long-term goal is to keep doing Neighbourhood Action Teams. This can be quite confronting for the donors. The outstanding part of this program is the sustainability that the training provides, as once participants have gained skills they take them with them, using them in a different context, generating momentum and causing a ripple effect. It’s about building peoples’ ongoing ability not just to acquire jobs, for example, but to create jobs, manage them, and make effective and ethical use of the money they generate. It’s a never-ending, evolutionary process.

The value of stories

Even for a process without an end, there are tools which can be used to monitor and measure progress. For instance carefully constructed documentaries on video can be used to explain and display change in communities, relying on both the scientific and the personal to demonstrate results.

Numbers will always be part of the evaluation - but when dealing with social returns, they can never be the whole evaluation. The type of project we are dealing with will determine the extent to which numbers are a part of it. Stories must remain a vital part of measuring the social return; because they feed the joy of giving.

Another approach to measuring social returns is the Social Return on Investment model - SROI. This model was developed by the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund in California to measure the social returns of its work in dollar terms: Social Ventures Australia are also doing some work with this model.

Let me give you an example of this measurement tool in action. A UK program called Getting Out to Work provides intensive one-to-one support and advocacy to young ex-offenders to help them find and sustain long-term employment.

The Getting Out to Work program is measured in terms of the project’s impact on the people who took part in the project and the communities where they live. The social returns which were taken into account include the increase in the personal income of the people participating in the project, the value created for the government because those people are no longer on unemployment benefits and are paying taxes, and the social benefits such as reduced crime. An independent evaluation has measured all these impacts in money terms and estimates that for every pound invested in the program, £10.50 of social value is created for society.

We can see that there isn’t just one model for evaluating social returns, there are several and no doubt many more will be developed in future.

Donors need more sophisticated ways to help make decisions and allocate funds: conventional methods of measuring economic value for money need to be set within a framework which includes a wider understanding of the full value of a project or organisation’s work. We are only at the beginning. But the beginning is the right place to be, because that’s where this kind of measurement needs to begin!

The important thing is to start out knowing what you want to achieve. It really comes back to pre-planning; articulating what you want to do; what evidence you have; and how you will know that you’re on the right track; and when you have got to the point where you feel you’ve succeeded. The time to start this process is not at the end of the project, but at the beginning - and to build that evaluation into every step along the way.