Resource ID: INDIGO-ARES-0105
Link: https://www.simetrica.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Short-Guide-to-Socail-Impact-Measurement.pdf
This short guide provides an introduction to social impact measurement for policy makers and practitioners to help make better investment and policy decisions. More in depth discussion on social impact measurement can be found in various publications on the SImetrica website. A full version of the guide will be available in due course.
Although there are a number of guidance manuals, despite this growing interest there does not exist a comprehensive text that describes each of the methods and compares them to help practitioners get a better idea of which method is appropriate for their organisation. In this Guide we provide an introduction to the main approaches to social impact measurement in use today and discuss the main issues to take into account when assessing social value.
Impact goal: Development poverty reduction
Internal/external: External, Internal
Leader: Simetrica
Method: Framework agnostic
Output format: Ordinal, Agnostic, Qualitative only, Monetary valuation, Quant but no index, Non monetary quant index
Scale: Meso, Macro, Micro, Agnostic
Sourcing: Self driven
Time frame: Ongoing, Prospective, Retrospective
Type: Guide
Used in sectors: Igos, Charity, Development, Impact investing, Governance policy, Social enterprises
Who: Third sector, Public sector, Private sector
INDIGO data are shared for research and policy analysis purposes. INDIGO data can be used to support a range of insights, for example, to understand the social outcomes that projects aim to improve, the network of organisations across projects, trends, scales, timelines and summary information. The collaborative system by which we collect, process, and share data is designed to advance data-sharing norms, harmonise data definitions and improve data use. These data are NOT shared for auditing, investment, or legal purposes. Please independently verify any data that you might use in decision making. We provide no guarantees or assurances as to the quality of these data. Data may be inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, and/or not current for various reasons: INDIGO is a collaborative and iterative initiative that mostly relies on projects all over the world volunteering to share their data. We have a system for processing information and try to attribute data to named sources, but we do not audit, cross-check, or verify all information provided to us. It takes time and resources to share data, which may not have been included in a project’s budget. Many of the projects are ongoing and timely updates may not be available. Different people may have different interpretations of data items and definitions. Even when data are high quality, interpretation or generalisation to different contexts may not be possible and/or requires additional information and/or expertise. Help us improve our data quality: email us at indigo@bsg.ox.ac.uk if you have data on new projects, changes or performance updates on current projects, clarifications or corrections on our data, and/or confidentiality or sensitivity notices. Please also give input via the INDIGO Data Definitions Improvement Tool and INDIGO Feedback Questionnaire.