This is a brief guide to improving the measurement of your organisation's social value or impact. Not only is this helpful for demonstrating the value of your organisation's activites to funders or investors, it is also useful for improving your service delivery.
It is likely that you are already doing some aspects of this process. Read on to find some practical steps on how you can improve.
Things you'll need
- Knowledge of how your organisation is currently engaging with stakeholders/monitoring their activities.
Steps to Involve Stakeholders
Who are your stakeholders? |
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Group discussion to list your real stakeholders Difficulty level: easy Time: 30 mins |
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Talking to stakeholders |
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Ask questions to understand your stakeholders perspectives Difficulty level: Moderate Time: Variable |
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Try to focus all your stakeholders – not just your primary beneficiary group (if you have one) – to focus on the changes they as individuals or an organisation experience, not what they want to see for others. Listen to what they have to say and note it down, particularly when it doesn’t match in with your goals or those of your funders. |
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Don’t just consult - involve |
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Involve your stakeholders in planning your evaluation Difficulty level: Hard Time: 2 hrs+ |
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Steps to Understand What Changes
Your story of change |
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Listing and sorting your outcomes Difficulty level: Hard Time: 2-3 hrs |
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2. Write each outcome on a card and then group them into short, medium and long-term (decide on your own definitions). 3. Write these up – you have a draft story of change!
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Negative outcomes |
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Group discussion to explore negatives Difficulty level: Moderate Time: 1-2 hours |
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Where is your evidence |
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Reviewing what you have Difficulty level: Moderate Time: 2-3 hours |
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Steps to Value the Things that Matter
How important are your outcomes? |
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Comparing outcomes Difficulty level: Medium/Moderate Time: 1-2 hours |
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Using published research to identify saving you deliver |
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Desk research Difficulty level: Medium - Hard Time: 3hrs – few days |
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Trying out the value game |
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Experimenting with stated preference Difficulty level: Easy Time: 1 hour |
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Look at the website www.valuegame.org and consider whether you could use this approach with some of your stakeholders to understand the importance or value they attach to the outcomes you cause. This approach is an engaging and practical way of getting people to think about values using a card game based on accepted economic techniques. |
Steps to Only Include What is Material
What matters to your stakeholders? |
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Putting yourself in others shoes Difficulty level: Easy Time: 30 mins |
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Arguing the toss |
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Challenging understanding Difficulty level: Medium Time: 1-2 hour |
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Talking to your stakeholders |
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Just asking Difficulty level: Medium Time: 2 hours |
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Steps to Avoid Overclaiming
Who else makes a difference? |
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Listing other factors |
Difficulty level: Easy |
Time: 1 hour |
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What would happen if you weren’t there? |
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Talking to your stakeholders Difficulty level: Hard Time: 1 day + |
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4. Once you have established what might have happened if you had not been there, ask them to estimate how much of the changes they have experienced as a result of your organisation/project they would have experienced anyway – this will be very rough. |
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Where is the evidence? |
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Triangulating evidence Difficulty level:Hard Time: 2-3 days |
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Steps to be Transparent
Identifying your sources |
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Organising and keeping notes Difficulty level: Moderate Time: Variable |
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When you are reporting make sure that you include a full explanation of where your evidence came from. So this might include:
Your goal is that someone reading your account can either replicate your approach for themselves or track down your sources of information without having to come back to you. |
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Public access to your information |
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Use the web Difficulty level: Moderate Time: Variable |
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Rather than keeping your reporting to yourself find ways to provide the greatest possible access. This might include printed information, particularly if you have stakeholders with limited information to the internet. But in general the most effective way of putting your information in the public domain would be to publish it on your website or someone else’s with clear search terms so that anyone can find it. |
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Stakeholder review meetings |
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Feedback to your stakeholders! Difficulty level: Easy Time: 2-3 hours |
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Once you have explored your outcomes, found evidence and reported it – however in-depth or limited this has been, check out your results with your stakeholders. You could do this simply by circulating a draft of the report and asking for feedback. Or you could call a meeting and present your results and ask for feedback. The key will be to share or present your results in a way to encourage challenge and debate rather than simply receive spelling corrections. |
Steps to Verify the Result
Feedback from stakeholders |
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Feedback to your stakeholders! Difficulty level: Easy Time: 2-3 hours |
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Once you have explored your outcomes, found evidence and reported it – however in-depth or limited this has been, check out your results with your stakeholders. You could do this simply by circulating a draft of the report and asking for feedback. Or you could call a meeting and present your results and ask for feedback. The key will be to share or present your results in a way to encourage challenge and debate rather than simply receive spelling corrections. |
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Feedback from experts |
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Ask for feedback! Difficulty level: Easy Time: 1 day + |
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Identify a small panel of experts in your field – you will probably know who they are in any case. Contact them initially be phone or email to secure their assistance in reviewing your report. Then send your report to them for comment – but highlight ten key questions rather than simply asking them for overall feedback. This is much more likely to stimulate a useful response. |
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Feedback from the SROI Network |
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Submit your report for assurance Difficulty level: Hard Time: 3 months + |
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This guide is meant for people starting out in SROI, not for those considering submitting a report to the SROI Network to have it assured. Once you are implementing the principles in full, however you may wish to make use of the Network assurance process – the only way (other than academic peer review) of getting any type of evaluation report externally assured in the UK at present. You can find out about the assurance process and other aspects of the SROI Network including practitioner training at www.sroinetwork.org |
Further information
This how-to is based on a guide published by the SROI Network (soon to be Social Value UK) and Hall Aitken. You can download the full guide at the SROI Network website here.
The steps are designed to be followed in parallel with a free online self assessment tool. You just set up an account, answer a set of questions and you can receive a break down of how well you are currently measuring social value. Sign up here.
The steps are themselves based around the 7 principles of SROI. You can read more about them here.
Contributors
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Mark Barratt
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Chris Milway
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