The thing most people know about SROI is that it’s a way of monetising social outcomes and that it gives you a figure to describe the added value of a funders’ investment – so, for example, for every £1 they invest in you, your work returns an additional £3.50 in social value.
It’s true! It does just that. I’ve also heard it said this adds yet more competition to the already tough environment – is your SROI higher than mine and if so how come?
It’s a shame and there’s no changing that for now. But the thing is, no two projects are exactly the same so SROI’s will be highly individual and need to be used not as comparisons to others, but as a means of comparing and improving your own performance in terms of the added social value – how can it be stronger, better, different? But we need to work with commissioners and funders to get that message across.
What’s also a shame is that this is only one of the outcomes of doing an SROI analysis of your work and there many others that are really useful.
I should say that whilst I was interested in SROI, I was by no means converted – indeed I was sceptical. I was intrigued though to discover whether SROI could be used to measure creative value. So far, it’s mainly been used to measure social economic and environmental gains. Creativity seems to be a tougher nut to crack. It’s easier to put value on a job (even a low paid one) than it is to put value (say) on acquiring knowledge of how to use writing to make sense of your world and give you the will to get up in the morning. Even though arguably once found, that knowledge is transformative – you will never be the same again. For example:
Writing
Relieves the
Inner side
To me which is
Interesting to
Normal people. We all
Grow together on this course.
For some strange but
Obvious
Reason it makes you feel
Healthy and
Enthusiastic
About what you have
Living inside your
Thoughts and
Heart
(Written by Natalie as part of her creative writing course and borrowed with permission from Pen and Tonic)
How do you monetise feeling healthy and enthusiastic about what you have living inside your thoughts and heart? I’ve no doubt it can be done, but it’s almost indecent to think about it, and that’s where the sceptic in me comes in…there are just some things I don’t want to count.
Which is why I’m least interested in this aspect of SROI’s worth.
Here are some things I’ve come to think as more essentially valuable – that is, if you get these right, your final SROI figure is almost bound to be impressive. They are tools that improve your work and an improved SROI figure is one of many results.
Many of us talk the talk of empowerment but walk the walk of grants and beneficiaries. We gnash our teeth but are caught in the contradiction that being in receipt of ‘grant aid’ is not on the whole an empowering contract even though we may be one of the lucky few to be so endowed. SROI treats all stakeholders as investors, it’s a significant paradigm shift that lends itself to collaboration – we become partners in a process, contributing what we have - money, creativity, childcare, space, expertise, our collective willingness to do something together to make the project happen.
Using the language of investment is empowering. The parent who describes their role as ‘just filling the gaps’ is in fact essential to their off-springs’ participation in the project. They come to see their role as a PA and their time as their investment. From here they can make a choice about the cost benefit of their involvement. Perhaps the total value of the parent’s contribution (now monetised) outweighs the total value of the funders’ contribution and for the company, this stakeholder group takes on a whole new significance.
It makes us look at who our stakeholders really are. What are they investing? If you can’t answer that question, they’re not stakeholders. People may support what you’re doing, but a stakeholder can tell you what they’re doing that contributes to your jointly agreed programme.
Undertaking an SROI analysis can be a good excuse to talk to your stakeholders and potential stakeholders to check out your assumptions and expectations of each other. In the course of these discussions you may be surprised – there could be a lot more you could do for each other than you thought. It might lead to a new and better approach or even a new project.
Being able to monetise the value of your stakeholder contribution is powerful evidence of the value of collaboration. The quality of your stakeholder engagement has a direct impact on your final SROI figure – those projects that can evidence high levels of collaboration will have high levels of return for investment.
You may have heard that doing an SROI calculation requires skills of mythical proportions. Initially this was true and the very thought of it had my eyes watering. Luckily the network has addressed this and we now have a spreadsheet which, so long as you feed it good data, rewards you by doing the calculations for you. Happy days! And a big thank you to the SROI Network for their hard work.
SROI is an excellent tool to help you prioritise where you target resources. The spreadsheet is extremely easy to use. You can remove a stakeholder group from your calculations and within seconds watch the impact on your SROI figure. You can see the cost to you in terms of sustaining a stakeholder group compared to what it generates in value – hours of fun!
Lastly, I’ve heard it said that SROI’s main benefit is that it creates work for consultants. Well, it certainly takes time to learn how to do it and it does take time and resources to implement but it’s like anything else, you can hand it over to others or you can learn to do it yourself or you can take a midway position, bring in the expertise when and if you need it. It certainly makes sense if a lot hangs on your SROI report, to have some external validation – a role for the SROI network perhaps.
It’s an evolving practice.
If any of this tickles your taste buds or gets you heated, please add your comments – I’ll be very happy to respond.