This document discusses sources of confusion in measuring social impact and proposes common principles. It notes that while there are many ways to measure different social impacts, there are not many ways to decide which outcomes to measure. The document suggests key questions to answer to understand the results, including what outcomes are important to manage and the extent to which outcomes were caused by activities. It discusses stakeholder involvement in determining these questions and principles. Finally, it considers standardizing principles for social impact analysis and how that could be achieved.

1. 12/12/2013
Towards common principles of
Social Impact analysis
Big Society Capital Outcomes Matrix
www.globalvaluexchange.
org
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2. 12/12/2013
SASB
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And shared explanations
Sources of Confusion
IRIS – SROI
GIIRS – SROI
IRIS - GIIRS
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Sources of Confusion
There are lots of ways of measuring social impact
Sources of Confusion
There are lots of ways of measuring social impact
Sources of Confusion
Level of accuracy required depends on the audience
There are many impacts which may need different tools
to measure them
But
There are NOT many ways of deciding which outcomes
to measure
Sources of Confusion
What are we trying to do with all
this measurement?
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5. 12/12/2013
What questions do you think we
need to answer to know
How much of a difference we have made?
Have we made as much of a difference as we can
with the resources available?
Results for what
These questions would be the
principles
What do we need to know?
1. What are the outcomes/issues?
2. How can we measure the outcome?
3. Which outcomes are important enough for us to
manage (be accountable for)?
4. To what extent were the outcomes/issues caused by
our activities?
5. Do we need to choose between different activities
creating different outcomes?
6. Who answered these questions?
7. How accurate do we need to be?
8. Are the results credible so that we can use them?
Most consistent principle but……
Stakeholders….
stakeholder involvement
Is not the same as
stakeholder consultation or engagement
Main groupings
Those approaches that recognise many outcomes and
so need an approach to deciding which to manage
materiality
Those that recognise that without benchmarking or
counterfactual we don’t know how much difference we
have made
Those that put different things on a single yardstick to
help decision making
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Advantages of standardising
principles? – Why? Why not?
How would we get more
standardisation of principles?
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