Social Impact Camp

I'm on the train home after a productive and enjoyable afternoon and evening in London.

I'd spent the morning in Leeds working with people with whom I'll soon be setting up a social business (yes me, the second Earl of Pointing Out That Other People Aren't Running Their Social Enterprises Quite As Well As They Could Be, setting up a social business.  It'd best be good.)

I spent the afternoon at RSA House making the most of their library facilities.  It's nice to feel that there's a little bit of London that's "mine".  On a day spent thinking about social impact, it was interesting to be reminded of the RSA's goal - to remove barriers to social progress.  A neat mission.  

This evening I went to the first Social Impact Camp, organised by Bright One Communications at UnLtd.  The idea was to bring together a load of social entrepreneurs who are interested in looking at ways that they can measure and prove the impact that their business has.

It's a crucial issue - and one that I've written about before.  My interest - and the reason I went down today - is in trying to develop ways to measure impact which are do-able by your average small business - social or otherwise.  I've had a fair bit of experience of most of the social accounting methods that are used within our sector, and let's just say I have an open mind as to whether they are appropriate and useful for the majority of people with whom I work. 

The thinking behind them is sound, and the methodology rigorous.  But I'm not wholly sure they are an appropriate use of time and resources for many small organisations.  Traidcraft, yes.  The Guardian, yes.  Fifteen Foundation, yes.  But most people I work with - and me?  No.

My impression from chatting with people tonight is that there are plenty of other people who feel the same.  A number of people hinted at feeling that their attempts to measure their impact were a bit inadequate.  A number of people had started to do something which was quite involved, and then, understandably, gave up.

Others have tried more DIY ways - Ben Matthews, who hosted tonight's event, talked us through the work he's done - focusing on the impacts that his communications work has with his clients.

One of "my" big ideas - which I hope we can develop at the Social Impact Camp - is to develop social impact circles.  I took the idea from the lending circles used by people like Grameen - where groups of people borrow together, support eachother, and, I suppose, keep eachother honest.  I think we could do something similar to help us to keep an eye on our social impact.  We could collaborate to clarify what we're trying to achieve (it's usually easier for someone else to see it - and they don't need to be an "expert"), and then remain accountable to each other as we report back on what we've done.  Instead of Social Audit Panels you'd have the wisdom of circles.

This stuff really matters.  Times are going to be tough for the next 5 or 10 years.  We'll need to learn to achieve a lot more good with a lot less money.  So we need ways of proving to ourselves that what we're doing is worthwhile -  whilst also proving to others that its worthy of investment. 

Comments

[Nick Temple]

Do you think the barrier is that there aren't appropriate tools + ways, Rob? Or is it more about people building it into what they do? Is the problem the tools, or lack of awareness / putting it into practice? (or are the tools the reason people aren't putting it into practice)

I think peer review is an interesting approach (one we've thought about in relation to quality auditing our franchises, for example), but would it, when it comes to the crunch, have the necessary credibility with funders, investors, stakeholders of all types? Not sure. Perhaps it would be a good step towards more formal evaluation.

[Andy Chapman]

I think that sometimes the issue can also be that people running social projects need to be more specific in describing for themselves and others what are the purposes and intended outcomes/ impact of their project. So, if someone says "our intended outcome is to increase our users' well being and confidence" - how will they know whether that has happened or not?

I agree that SROI analysis can be rather demanding as far as the data gathering and research demands it can impose and so can be unsuitable for smaller organisations and projects- but a lot of worthwhile information about outcomes and impact can be established simply through careful project design at the outset and relatively simple "soft outcomes" assessment techniques.

I think also that some funders and social investors may need educating in the fundamental limitations of SROI analysis as it stands. It would be a shame if the harsher funding climate were to be accompanied by a fetish for "monetising" anything that moves in a mistaken effort to "demonstrate value" - when the results are often hghly subjective and cannot be readily compared between projects anyway.

[Rob Greenland]

Thank you both for the comments, both very good points. I think you've got a point Nick, and it would be a shame to go through a process of inventing something completely new if what is already there just needs adapting, and using better.

My honest thoughts are that I don't know if that's the case or not. Hopefully I'll get the time to look in more detail again at the other systems used. I've had experience of social accounting by Cliff Southcombe, John Pearce et al, Selling Added Value (SESC in Yorkshire) and have also read the stuff that nef have done. I also keep an eye on stuff that Jeremy Nicholls does. I think there is great value in all of this, but the question still remains for me whether the way the different systems are set up are at an appropriate scale for many organisations. Having sat on Social Audit Panels too, I left with very big questions as to whether the organisations (which had invested their own money and loads of time) really got anything valuable out of it, beyond a nice tick in the box which said "we've done a social audit". A big issue was that it took ages to do - by which time the business had moved on and recommendations were out of date. Are there ways to do more real-time accounting - I'd suggest that the circle idea would help there.

But maybe, as you and Andy say, it's about how it's done. I agree with Andy that a good number of organisations struggle with this because they aren't clear about what their goals are in the first place. If these are vague or unknown, you end up counting random things, which may or may not prove that you're having an impact. It proves you're doing things, but are they good things? And do they further your mission? So yes, integrating this into the business planning process is vital - and I'm sure all of the big social accounting systems encourage that. As you say, it may be that people don't really think about their goals because they take it as read that they "do good stuff".

Are either of you in contact with the other social impact/SROI people? I'll contact Cliff Southcombe, SESC, and Jeremy Nicholls to ask them to add their thoughts here. Nick/Andy/other people - do you know others from nef and elsewhere who could tell us what they think? I think yesterday proved that enough people think that the current ways of doing this, for whatever reasons, don't work for a good number of people. So it'd be good to work with the current systems to see if we can improve them - it might be about interpretation/translating some of it into better language and systems for small businesses - given that the underlying principles are sound.

[Martin Cooper]

I'm focusing very much on this in my work at the moment and great that you've raised it.

Following Nick's point, i think it is:
-building it into what they/organisation do
-and not so much tools - but more awareness or mindset.
- early foundations that provide the basis for using tools/ methods later on

I'm finding that for many social entrepreneurs - at the idea/start up stage - just sitting down and having a 1-1 conversation about it, perhaps around a storyboard/theory of change, but perhaps without - and just allowing them - as you say Andy, to describe for themselves and others what are the purposes and intended outcomes/ impact of their project and how will they know - provides the best foundation. Given the right questions, (and sometimes it might be quite critical) and energy - they love to do this and do it well in my experience.

The issue as i see it at this moment is:

1) Measuring impact / outcomes has been trapped within monitoring, evaluation, research.... almost as if outcomes and impact are actually about measurement. Your comment that some people felt inadequate at the camp is really interesting i think in this sense - they feel inadequate partly because of this competition around measurement. Some competition in this is healthy - but we should be seeking to liberate social entrepreneurs on this issue and sometimes i think it does the opposite.

2) Related to this is the mindset. I've just done some work with a large organisation who had many excellent and standard evaluation processes in place - outcomes all mapped out, relevant outcome indicators, right accross projects as well as for the organisation, external evaluations, theory of change etc...All good stuff. But for many of the staff, this was dry, technical boredom and actually left them feeling further away from their impact. This is partly about making sure the M&E is effective and they can see the difference it makes etc..but its also about really working with the internal aspects of all this. Some people lock into impact measurement or the accounting mindset straight away - its their thing, but there must be space and ways to help others who aren't into excel spreadsheets with outcomes indicators - and i think this is part of the challenge.

I try and remind myself that there are many ways to get to the truth about what we do (which to me, is what social impact is about ultimately) and to help us do it better. Being curious about how social entrepreneurs do this and then strenghtening this (including using SROI/social accounting etc...) is the game i think.

Wonderful post - thanks.

[MJ Ray]

I think the key may be that it needs to be low impact as well as about social impact. Too much of the established methods seem to concentrate on the bigger businesses (and cynically, is there more potential for profit in selling training courses for complicated analysis methods?)

The circles idea is interesting and seems worth developing.

Very cross that this comment box asked me to complete an eye test after I clicked "Submit". Discrimination is a bit anti-social.