Culture Works blog

Here’s a short article about how Magpie Dance - a dance company for learning disabled adults have used SROI

Here’s news from NCVO about how the Conservative party are considering SROI + an invitation to take part in an SROI survey

Invaluable resources from the SROI network here

Measuring Social Value: The Gap Between Policy and Practice
Author(s):Claudia Wood;Daniel Leighton;

This report was commissioned and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as part of their commitment to developing the capacity of the third sector to maximise its social return through innovation.  It was carried out by Demos.  The report outlines the benefits and challenges presented by social return on investment (SROI) methodology. The sample in this report indicates that many are not yet ready for the full rigours of the SROI framework. The report identifies a gap between expectations, especially those of government departments having invested in SROI, and reality: the experience of organisations considering  SROI as a method of assessing value. The report makes suggestions on how this gap between expectations and reality can be bridged.

The report concludes that:

1 There are several, and diverse, methods for measuring social value, and this fragmentation may be a factor in the poor penetration of social value reporting in the third, statutory and commercial sectors.

2 A recent surge in interest in social reporting has seen SROI becoming the tool promoted by government, thanks to its unique feature of attributing monetary values to ‘soft’ outcomes.

3 Current policy is focusing on making SROI, a complex and resource intensive process, more accessible and user-friendly to third sector organisations.

4 A snapshot of a range of third sector organisations suggests, however, that very few organisations are implementing SROI as yet and, indeed, the majority are not ‘SROI ready’. SROI readiness
mainly involves being able to identify and measure organisational outcomes adequately in a quantitative way.

5 Consultation with a number of practitioners and experts confirms this view. Many are sceptical about the feasibility of making SROI the norm for the third sector.

6 Nevertheless, although SROI may be neither practicable nor desirable for all organisations, the basic concepts of outcomes evaluation that it encourages are important for all organisations
to achieve.

The writers make the following recommendations:

1 Given that the principles behind SROI are sound, but for many SROI is an extremely ambitious goal, there ought to be a more achievable social value measurement target set for the third
sector as a whole.

2 This needs to embody good outcomes measurement and evaluation practice, and will prove a stretch target for many in the sector.

3 It will require investment in the sector in training and practical guidance, as well as encouragement and incentivisation from commissioners and funders to help the entire sector to reach it as
a universal benchmark.

4 Setting this benchmark must be underpinned by three fundamental principles:
• proportionality: so that the burden of evaluation is in line with the scale and nature of the organisation undertaking it
• comparability: so that even with a range of flexible frameworks, organisations can still produce outputs based on comparable principles and terms of reference
• standardisation: so that there are tools and data available to remove the need to evaluate outcomes from scratch and reduce the burden on organisations.

5 Stakeholders from all sides – organisations from the third, statutory and public sector, policy makers and leading strategic bodies – need to consider how to make concrete this concept of an achievable benchmark of social value measurement, including what combination of investment, incentivisation and tools need to be in place. In lifting the entire sector to a universal, achievable standard of measuring social value, these proposals do not represent the limiting of the SROI ambition – simply a more equitable advancement towards it.

Other related reports
Proving Value and Improving Practice: NEF consulting