Social Return on Investment: The Full Stop At The End Of Your Story

Attributing financial value to social outcomes is complex. There's a reason that most Government Contracts only ask providers to report on their outputs, rather than their outcomes or greater impact.

With the re-emergence of Governmental focus on Social Investment, many organisations are feeling pressured to enter a rapid but in some cases reductive process of calculating their Social Return on Investment or SROI.

Social Return on Investment (SROI) can be a powerful way to communicate impact. However, you must apply a range of tools to truly understand and measure your impact. The order of applying these tools matters too: First invest in properly understanding the outcomes you create, THEN measure them or calculate their value.

Impact is about positive change for people and the planet. To understand your impact it is crucial to find opportunities to observe those changes and to engage the people who have experienced them to gather the full picture of what has changed and how these changes ripple out into the wider community. By doing so authentically, you might uncover a far richer or deeper story.

Having your impact story (or Theory of Change) well articulated and validated by your stakeholders is an essential foundation for measuring your impact or undertaking a SROI analysis. The results will inevitably be more compelling than what would be achieved by jumping straight to SROI.

Calculating SROI is a serious investment, involving analysis of avoided costs and analysis of the value of the outcomes for those experiencing them. Like any investment - do your due diligence! Make sure what you're measuring is meaningful by understanding your impact story first.

Get in touch with Ākina

If you’re struggling to measure the positive impact your organisation creates, want create impact or are keen to start your social investment journey, get in touch with Ākina by emailing info@akina.org.nz

Read Ākina’s Social Investment White Paper here.