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Monday Apr 06, 2009
Social Return on Investment
Last week we held the latest in our series of breakfast seminars. This time the topic was "SROI (Social Return on Investment to you and I) – a new impact model", and the audience was treated to presentations from Claire (our Operations Director), Sarah (our Research Manager), as well as Andrew Wilson (Managing Director of Corporate Citizenship) and our very own Martyn Lewis.
You can see the slides below, but do let us know if you want more information or would be interested in meeting up to get some more context.
The three things I learnt from the presentation were:
- The SROI model involves making some assumptions about what you do. The key is to be transparent about what assumptions you've made and the calculations you've used;
- It's really hard to put a clear, binary outcome on some types of work. SROI came out of evaluating employment programmes that either resulted in employment or didn't – it's much harder (although not impossible) to quantify programmes that improve self-esteem, for example;
- The reaction from funders attending the seminar was very positive – both in terms of the fact that we were up for doing the research, and the clear benefit to society per investment made that we can now demonstrate.
Here are the slides:
