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Books and Guides
Books and Guides
Christian Schober and Volker Then have authored a German handbook introducing an approach to impact measurement and analysis, Social Return of Investment (SROI). The handbook includes practical tips for the concrete implementation of SROI analysis, as well as views and critical reflection of the method with checklists, illustrations and case studies. Published by: Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag, Stuttgart (Germany) 2015.
The SIAA Bulgaria Impact Group, supported by the Tulip Foundation in Bulgaria, has translated the Inspiring Impact (UK) Funders’ principles and drivers of good impact practice into Bulgarian. The principles are designed to encourage good impact practice and to offer practical and useful guidance for funders, and to help funders promote good impact practice amongst the organisations and people they support. The English version can be found on the Inspiring Impact website.
This short guide from Daniel Fujiwara of SImetrica provides an introduction to social impact measurement for policy makers and practitioners to help make better investment and policy decisions. The guide covers five key models of social impact measurement, some criticisms of social impact to watch out for, choosing a social impact method and SImetrica’s approach.
Measuring Impact: Guidelines for Good Impact Practice was developed by the Impact Measurement Working Group (IMWG) of the Social Impact Investment Taskforce established by the G8. This work elevates existing best practices and aligns with the European Standard for Social Impact Measurement (developed by GECES). The IMWG was established in June 2013 at the G8 Social Impact Investment Forum in London to develop measurement guidelines for impact investors as well as a vision for impact measurement in the years ahead.
The “Evidence for Success” guide was produced by the KTN and published in August 2014, which was established in 2012 to facilitate and share learning about effective knowledge translation and dissemination activities.
The guide offers easy to follow, step-by-step guidance and resources to support organisations to use evidence to influence policy and practice. It is for anyone who wants to use evidence to improve policy and practice, regardless of the level of experience they have in doing so. Therefore, it is intended that this guide will also be of value to a wide range of stakeholders, including: practitioners, service managers, funders and commissioners, and policy makers and planners.
Social Finance launched the world’s first Social Impact Bond (SIB) in 2010 and the concept has since been adopted globally. This guide provides a snapshot of the global SIB market as of August 2014.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) provides a guides for Social Investment Tax Relief. It includes:
- Guidance for social enterprises
- Guidance for investors
- Get approval if you’re a social enterprise
- How to claim tax relief if you’re an investor
- Form: SITR Compliance Statement
- Policy on Social Investment Tax Relief
This resource provides an overview of different tools and resources, with links to further information, that nef consulting uses for evaluating and assessing impact. These include:
- Social Return on Investment (SROI)
- Multi-Criteria Appraisal (MCA)
- Outcomes Evaluation
- Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA)
- Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA)
- Social Value Appraisal
- Local Multiplier 3 (LM3)
- Prove and Improve Toolkits
Jargon Buster provides short definitions of technical terms (e.g. outcome, impact, indicator) with links to more detailed explanations and examples.
NPC believes in impact measurement as a way for charities and funders to increase their effectiveness. It helps organisations improve what they do and deliver the best results for their beneficiaries. NPC’s four pillar approach by Anne Kazimirski and David Pritchard provides clear and practical guidance on developing an impact measurement framework.
This report, Private Capital, Public Good: How Smart Federal Policy Can Galvanize Impact Investing – and Why It’s Urgent (June 2014), by the US National Advisory Board on Impact Investing (NAB) provides a framework for federal policy action in support of impact investing. Simply put, impact investing generates measurable, beneficial social or environmental impacts alongside financial returns. The proposals in this report—some near-term and concrete, others longer-term and more ambitious—have the power to unlock dramatic economic activity and immense positive impact. Ultimately, they may serve as a catalyst to help change the way investors think about long-term risks and returns.
Iridescent Ideas CIC and marketing social enterprise Poached Creative are demystifying social impact reporting with the publication of a white paper for social enterprises Why Impact?.
This paper explores some of the key issues around social impact reporting that were uncovered via a social media campaign in Spring 2014 and encourages social enterprises to get started (if they haven’t already). It covers:
- Reasons to measure and demonstrate social impact
- Common challenges
- What good social impact reporting looks like
- Resources and support available.
The Difference is a magazine that launched by Simon McKeon in 2011. The Difference is used as a strategy for organising fundraising and corporate sponsorship for charities that work in the areas of disadvantage covered in the publication.
Perspectives is the thought-leadership magazine from nef consulting, published twice a year. Each issue has a main theme but in future issues articles from across nef consulting’s work and interviews with experts will be included.
This resource from the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT) provides information about evidence-informed public health.
Understanding the difference between outputs and outcomes is important. Outputs relate to “what we do.” Outcomes refer to “what difference is there.”
Since 2007, Social Ventures Australia (SVA) Consulting has completed over 400 projects with over 200 organisations across employment, education, community services, health and indigenous affairs. The SVA Consulting Quarterly brings together what they have learned from their work and the insights they have gained in new practices, novel methodologies and fresh wisdom.
This report by Lizzie Trotter, Jim Vine, Matt Leach and Daniel Fujiwara from HACT, produced in conjunction with Value Calculator, places robust values on the social impact of community investment activities. It includes values as well as practical guidance on how to apply them to achieve a basic assessment of social value using the Well-being Valuation approach.
This paper, by Daniel Fujiwara for HACT, sets out the methodology and analytical approach underlying the work on community investment and social value. The paper explains the Well-being Valuation approach, provides details of the datasets that the analysis draws on, describes the statistical method in technical detail, and introduces the broader theory behind social impact.
Published in March 2014, this detailed guidance covers:
-What is social value?
-What is covered by the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012
-Requirements on local authorities
-How voluntary organisations can demonstrate social value
-How the Compact and social value relate to each other
The briefing is intended to be easy to understand and provides a number of practical case studies and practical actions to take.
This is an except from Measuring and Improving Social Impacts: A Guide for nonprofits, companies, and impact investors by Marc J. Epstein and Kristi Yuthas. All organisations have social impacts: some are positive and some negative. Measuring and Improving Social Impacts is about how you can learn to make decisions that will improve the positive social impact of companies, foundations, nonprofits, and impact investors.
This book addresses the five most fundamental questions faced by companies, and nonprofits, and investors seeking to maximise their social impact:
- What Will You Invest?
- What Problem Will You Address?
- What Steps Will You Take?
- How Will You Measure Success?
- How Can You Increase Impact?
The SROI Guide from The SROI Network, and related supplements provided, sets out a step by step approach to completing an analysis of social return. Essentially SROI maps out the value of your work using a set of principles.
The guide includes
- Social Return on Investment for social investing
- Social Return on Investment and commissioning
- Social Return on Investment - an introduction
This report from the GECES Sub-group on Impact Measurement features the standard to allow social enterprises of all sizes to better measure and demonstrate their social impact and so help them in their discussions with partners, investors, and public sector funders.
The Social Investment Roadmap from the Cabinet Office UK sets out the steps that the UK government is taking to ensure that there are the right conditions for social enterprises to thrive in the UK through tax relief.
Everyone acting in or for the Third Sector now recognise the importance of measuring impact. The key question has now become: how to do it efficiently?
There are many ways to create and embed a successful impact measurement system within a specific project or an organisation, using highly customised tools, or more standardised one. The Social E-valuator is one of the latter. Thanks to its web-based tool, it supports organisations throughout the process of analysing and evaluating social impact. Social E-valuator makes social impact measurement better accessible, cost-efficient and enables organisations to report about impact in a consistent way.
This free webinar introduced impact measurement using the Social E-valuator tool. The webinar lasted an hour, during which Stone Soup briefly introduced the topic, and a case study based on the company “Philips” - The Philips Employment Scheme (WGP) - was used by Social E-valuator to illustrate how to measure impact and how to use Social Evaluator tool to do so.
Fundamentals of Modern Philanthropy provides new perspectives on the broad variety of impacts that
charitable foundations can make, by both applying and acquiring funds.
This document from PwC in the Netherlands provides information for social entrepreneurs on how to turn your ambition to have a positive impact on the world into a business case and offers four guiding principles on what ‘social’ investors want.
The SROI Network have developed a timeline so that you can learn about the development of the SROI methodology and a short history of The SROI Network.
This document by The SIB Group and The Good Analyst is aimed at helping organisations that are looking to develop their own social impact measurement and reporting. It draws on a wide body of existing research to set out the fundamentals of measuring impact and working with results. It takes a non-prescriptive approach, as they believe that the first requirement of any impact measurement system is that it is of greatest use to you. Rather than telling you what you have to measure, the guidelines lay down an explicit framework as to how your ideas, your activities, and the things that matter most to you can be assembled into a coherent system for impact measurement and reporting.
Making Sense of Data and Information in the Social Sector, from Markets for Good, is a collection of selected readings from the previous year with ideas about how to upgrade the system for sharing knowledge in the social sector. The b-Book provides a range of perspectives on the most critical data-related challenges facing the social sector, and how these challenges can be addressed. Posts were chosen for their high readership, topic diversity, and thought leadership. The authors debate new and recurring hurdles in the social sector, like capacity and capital constraints; how qualitative data, including stories and beneficiary insights, can be incorporated into data-driven decision processes; and big-, medium-, and small-data management.
What is social impact? How do I get involved? This flyer from SIAA’s Start Social Impact scheme will answer some of your questions.
L’Avise, l’ESSEC IIES et le Mouves ont publié un petit précis de l’évaluation de l’impact social.
Cette publication est le fruit de travaux collectifs de près de 20 structures rassemblées autour d’une même volonté : proposer des repères à toute entreprise sociale, association ou structure d’utilité sociale qui souhaite enrichir ses connaissances sur le sujet.
Qu’est-ce que l’évaluation de l’impact social ? A quoi et à qui sert-elle ? Comment la mettre en œuvre ? Quels exemples concrets ? Ce petit précis apporte des éléments de réponse et donne des repères indispensables pour évaluer l’impact d’une entreprise sociale.
This interactive graph from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provides a wheel of all measures of national well-being. It presents the breadth of measures used in the measurement of well-being, and allows comparisons between the most recent data in the time series for each measure.
Theory of Change is nothing new. It is not just a donor fad or yet another hoop to jump through. It is an ongoing process of reflection to explore change and how it happens in our context. Yet it can provide a very powerful learning lens which makes us ask ourselves and others simple but important questions about what we are doing and why. By focussing attention on the lasting changes we aim to bring, and reflecting on what really contributes to those kinds of changes, it can help us step out of ‘project activity’ mode, question our assumptions, and focus on what really matters. It enables us to learn from others, build a common understanding of our work and develop clarity in our strategies and partnerships. It provides a clear framework for learning, monitoring and evaluation.
So many people in the development world are talking about ‘Theory of Change’ but many are confused as to what it really means. This guide from INTRAC, written for small and diaspora organisations as part of the Common Ground Initiative Peer Learning Programme, therefore aims to demystify theory of change and highlights a few useful resources for further exploration.
Knowing and Showing Your Outcomes and Impacts is a guide for any community, voluntary or charity organisation. Its principles are also readily transferable to social enterprises. It may also be of interest to those who work with any such organisations, including statutory and philanthropic funders, investors, private companies practising corporate social responsibility and consultants/advisors. Although the guide focuses on the Irish experience, its content may also be applicable in an international context.
This report by John Copps and Dawn Plimmer for Inspiring Impact addresses the issue of youth unemployment. It helps organisations that work with young people understand and measure the impact they have on the journey to employment.
It features the Journey to EmploymenT (JET) framework.
The Practical Guide is a resource that distills best practice in impact measurement into five easy-to-understand steps and provides practical tips and recommendations for how to implement impact measurement at the level of the social investor and in the social sector organisations that they support.
The Good Investor, authored by Adrian Hornsby and Gabi Blumberg, is a guide for investors who make investments into companies, organisations and funds to generate measurable social and environmental impact. This guide is structured around incorporating impact assessment into the various stages of the investment process, progressing from the investors’ initial exposure to investment opportunities, through the screening and analysis, and onto making investment decisions, monitoring and evaluating, and reporting on the impact achieved.
These documents explain the relationship between Social Return on Investment (SROI) and 1) Social Accounting and Audit (SAA), 2) GIIRS Ratings & Analytics (“GIIRS” stands for the Global Impact Investing Ratings System) a comprehensive, comparable, and transparent system for assessing the social and environmental impact of companies and funds with a ratings and analytics approach analogous to Morningstar investment rankings, and 3) IRIS (Impact Reporting and Investment Standards) standardized performance indicators to help an organization understand its impact in a credible and comparable way.
In Working Hard—and Working Well, Dr. David E.K. Hunter shares the secret formula behind the intensive, tough-love workshops that have sparked transformation for many of the country’s top nonprofit organizations. The book is highly relevant for:
- Nonprofit leaders who know that guesswork is not enough when lives are on the line
- Board members and advisors who are brave enough to ensure that their organizations do what they say they do
- Consultants who want to help nonprofits develop performance cultures and systems
- Funders who demand performance from their grantees–and are willing to invest in it!
This resource from Social Finance UK provides information on their experience in developing SIBs. This tool acts as a template for developing approaches to move more resource into prevention work. The report focuses on Children Services although will be useful for other local authority services areas where there is potential for significant social impact.
Social Finance is committed to providing a range of support for those interested in developing SIB proposals. This could range from full engagement through a detailed feasibility study of a particular intervention or issue area to help with specific parts of the SIB development process (see below for further details of this process). We are aiming to provide a set of tools to help minimise the costs of developing these products and we hope that this guide – which is intended to be freely available – is a useful start point.
This guide from Quality Matters provides an introduction to three commonly used methods for planning impact measurement for social service organisations: Logic Model, Theory of Change and Social Return on Investment (SROI). The aim of the guide is to provide readers with sufficient information to understand these models and select one that will most suit the needs of their organisation.
The CES Resource Guide: Evaluating outcomes and impact from the Charities Evaluation Services contains over 130 online and published guides, tools, discussion papers and fact sheets on all aspects of evaluation. It is designed as an interactive guide, and is a great go to resource for anyone involved with monitoring and evaluation.
The free guide contains the following dedicated sections:
- General guides and introductions to evaluation
- Assessing outcomes and impact
- Evaluation approaches and methods
- Sub-sector specific guidance
- Creative tools for engaging a range of stakeholders in monitoring and evaluation
- Useful websites
‘Measuring and managing total impact: A new language for business decisions’ from PwC explores why business needs total impact measurement, how to do it and the benefits of embedding it into decision making. PwC showcase ‘Total Impact Measurement & Management’, the framework developed with clients to provide the total perspective on business impact.
Corporate Procurement has developed a Corporate Strategy for Commissioning and Procurement, supported by a Sustainable Commissioning and Procurement Policy. These aim to ensure that they carry out all commissioning and procurement activities collaboratively and in an economic, environmental and socially responsible manner on behalf of Durham County Council and its key stakeholders, whilst making sustainable purchasing decisions that promote the long-term interests of the communities
they represent.
The Public Services (Social Value) Act came into force on 31 January 2013. This Procurement Policy Note (PPN) from the UK Cabinet Office and the Efficiency and Reform Group gives guidance supporting the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012.
This document from HM Treasury presents a framework for appraising the quality of qualitative evaluations. It was developed with particular reference to evaluations concerned with the development and implementation of social policy, programmes and practice. The framework was devised as part of a programme of research conducted on behalf of the Cabinet Office.
Quality in policy impact evaluation (QPIE) is a supplement to the Magenta Book from HM Treasury and provides a guide to the quality of impact evaluation designs. It has been developed to aid policy makers and analysts understand and make choices about the main impact evaluation designs by understanding their pros and cons and how well each design can allow for any measured change to be attributed to the policy intervention being investigated.
This handbook authored by Jaan Aps from Stories for Impact and the Estonia Social Enterprise Network has recently provoked discussions in Estonia among financiers of Estonian civil society development, including The National Foundation of Civil Society (NFCS) and Open Estonia Foundation.
This short handbook by Juliet Michaelson on measuring well-being is produced by the Centre for Well-being at nef (the new economics foundation) with input from nef consulting. It is designed primarily for voluntary organisations and community groups delivering projects and services, to help them kick-start the process of measuring well-being outcomes.
The Public Services (Social Value) Act came into force on 31 January 2013. This briefing from the National Housing Association by Sara Cunningham outlines the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 and examines what the new legislative requirement mean for housing associations’ procurement and tendering processes. It also explains the options that housing associations have if they wish to analyse the social value of their own activities and how this may help in securing contracts with local authorities or other public bodies.
For housing associations the Act applies in two important and distinct respects:
- Housing associations are bound by the requirements of the legislation when procuring a service.
- Housing associations must be prepared to define the social and economic value and impact of the services they offer when tendering for a service from a local authority or another relevant body.
Evaluation has the ability to provide a wealth of information for grantmakers, as well as the organizations and communities they serve, to learn from. When done well, evaluation increases the capacity and improves performance of grantees. GEO provides funders with best practices to incorporate evaluation into their grantmaking through “four essentials:” Lead, Plan, Organize and Share.
This literature review by Ingrid Burkett, Knode explores the potential for a new approach to investment that focuses on revitalising communities, creating jobs and building economic opportunity. Similar approaches have been used widely in the US and the UK. Investors ranging from banks and superannuation funds to foundations and individuals have invested in funds that are creating quality jobs and economic opportunities in underserved and under-invested communities and generating a viable financial return. The thesis of this work is that similar funds could also provide new opportunities for investment and community regeneration in Australia.
This presentation from the British Council demonstrates how they evaluate impact. It includes indicators, a logic model and examples of data collection.
This paper by Angela Kail and Tris Lumley from NPC explores what is a Theory of Change and how it can be used for strategy, evaluation and understanding outcomes.
This is the first in a series of issue briefs from the Center for American Progress that looks at Social Impact Bonds (SIB) and their value to government agencies. Subsequent pieces will focus on getting the SIB agreement right; models for SIBs and their long-term potential; defining and measuring outcomes for SIBs; and appropriate roles for government agencies in the SIB process.
The Good Analyst authored by Adrian Hornsby, presents a methodology for impact analysis, alongside a set of guidelines for measuring and reporting impact. The book also draws on Adrian and his colleagues’ broader experience of impact research to lay out an overview of where the practice is today, of how we got here, and theory of analysis itself. The Good Analyst incorporates the Investing for Good Guidelines for How to Measure and Report Social Impact and is accompanied by the Dictionary of Indicators.
In this paper from the UK Department for Work and Pensions Social Justice is defined and a new set of principles that inform their approach are described:
1. A focus on prevention and early intervention
2. Where problems arise, concentrating interventions on recovery and independence, not maintenance
3. Promoting work for those who can as the most sustainable route out of poverty, while offering unconditional support to those who are severely disabled and cannot work
4. Recognising that the most effective solutions will often be designed and delivered at a local level
5. Ensuring that interventions provide a fair deal for the taxpayer
The Public Services (Social Value Act) was passed at the end of February 2012. This is a brief guide from Social Enterprise UK to how it is likely to change things and how it should work in practice.
This “Guide to Commissioning for Value” is written by the SROI Network for the Local Government Association (LGA) as part of the National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning.
This report is a joint publication of Credit Suisse and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
The growing interest in impact investing is hard to miss. Today, more investors and entrepreneurs than ever are proactively investing their capital in solutions designed to generate a positive social or environmental impact, while also having the potential for some financial return.
The report includes articles about new ways to invest for social and environmental impact, trends in impact investing, unlocking capital to drive social impact, funding growth of social businesses and stories from the field
This paper, by Andrea Westall for NAVCA’s Local Commissioning and Procurement Unit, provides an overview of the different tools and approaches that are being used and developed for measuring and evidencing how charities and community
groups create social value, and discusses the implications for these organisations.
The Good Analyst’s Guidelines for How to Measure and Report Social Impact are aimed at organisations looking to engage with social impact measurement. They provide a lucid walk-through of the key processes involved in creating an impact measurement system, and set out an outline for an impact report.
The Good Analyst’s Dictionary of Indicators is a resource primarily for social-purpose organisations looking to develop their own impact measurement capabilities. It accompanies the Guidelines for How to Measure and Report Social Impact. While the Guidelines lay out a framework for building an impact measurement system, the Dictionary provides a supporting reference tool for the specific task of choosing indicators.
This guide from the SROI Network is an updated version of the 2009 Guide to SROI that was published by the Cabinet Office. There are no changes to the principles or methodology used to apply those principles within the framework.
The purpose of the update is to amend the language used so that it is more relevant for international audiences and for different sectors and types of organisations.
This document from the SROI Network details the seven principles of Social Return on Investment (SROI).
The stories charities and social enterprises tell about the difference they make can engage, inform and inspire stakeholders. Clearly communicating the impact of your work is important. This document, developed for the sector, by the sector, offers a guide to help you think about how you should communicate your impact, and what you should communicate. This document sets out principles of good impact reporting, to help charities and social enterprises tell their own story about impact.
By using these principles to demonstrate their impact, charities and social enterprises can have a strong influence on how they are perceived. They can help to shift the prevailing focus away from concerns about administration costs or chief executives’ salaries, and towards what really matters: the difference they make in people’s lives.
New statutory guidance on the Best Value Duty from the Department for Communities and Local Government sets out some reasonable expectations of the way authorities should work with voluntary and community groups and small businesses when facing difficult funding decisions. It falls under the policy of “Making local councils more transparent and accountable to local people”.
The Magenta Book from HM Treasury provides guidance on what to consider when designing an evaluation. It includes information on key issues in policy evaluation, identifying the right evaluation, setting out the evaluation framework, data collection and reporting evidence.
In Happiness: Lessons from a new science Richard Layard demonstrates the paradox at the heart of our lives: Most people want more income, yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. Scientific research shows this to be true. There are now sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. This book is considered to be a leading resources in the field of “happiness studies”.
This CAF Venturesome handbook provides a roadmap for both policy-makers and impact investors for catalysing a robust social investment market, drawing lessons from 30 years of microfinance industry development.
This is a guide to the Continuum of Evidence of Effectiveness from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a continuum that defines the standards of Best Available Research Evidence in the field of violence prevention and provides information for decision makers in this field on these standards.
This guide written by Alan Kay from the Social Audit Network includes reference to the range of frameworks and methods developed to help organisations explain and account for their performance and impact. It is a “roadmap” to the social accounting and audit process and has been written for social enterprises, social economy organisations and voluntary sector organisations that wish to regularly account and report on their social, economic and environmental performance and impact.
IRIS is an initiative of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a nonprofit organisation dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing. This three-page background document gives an overview of what IRIS is, why IRIS was created, and how IRIS benefits investors, fund managers, and companies.
Leap of Reason inspires leaders in the social and public sectors to take bold action to create more meaningful, measurable good for those they serve. The book is the product of decades of management insights from philanthropist Mario Morino, McKinsey & Company, and more than a dozen experts and practitioners.
The Little Blue Book, by Belinda Vernon and John Copps is NPC’s concise and practical guide to analysing charities, for charities and funders. The guide contains examples of how charities and funders benefit from analysis, and explains NPC’s charity analysis framework, which looks at how charities can assess their effectiveness in six areas:
- Activities: Do the charity’s activities address a genuine need?
- Results: Can it demonstrate results of what it has achieved?
- Leadership: Do trustees and management provide high quality leadership?
- People and resources: Does it use staff, volunteers and resources well?
- Finances: Are the finances sound?
- Ambition: Is it ambitious to solve social problems?
This brief document by the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) defines the role and value of impact assessment (IA), including all disciplines, and explains how IA relates to decision-making. It is written for technical people unfamiliar with IA, for decision makers on the fringes of IA, and for people new to this field.
This report from The Good Childhood Inquiry was commissioned by The Children’s Society. The report, authored by Richard Layard and Judy Dunn, was the first independent national inquiry into childhood, started in 2006. Evidence was contributed by over 30,000 people, of which 20,000 were children, from polls, research and focus groups. The report includes recommendations from the panel to parents, teachers, the Government, the media and society in general.
Mission, Inc.: The practitioner’s guide to social enterprise, by Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls Jr, is a practical book that focuses on the day-to-day challenges and opportunities faced by social enterprise practitioners, to help create highly successful businesses.
This guide is part of the Cabinet Office and Scottish Government programme to support SROI, including the development of a database of indicators to support SROI analysis. The purpose of this guide is to standardise practice, develop the methodology, and provide more clarity on the use of SROI. It has been written for people who want to measure and analyse the social, environmental and economic value being generated by their activities or by the activities they are funding
or commissioning.
Network of Networks for Impact Evaluation (NONIE) is was formed to promote quality impact evaluation. NONIE fosters a program of impact evaluation activities based on a common understanding of the meaning of impact evaluation and approaches to conducting impact evaluation. By sharing methodological approaches and promoting learning by doing on
impact evaluations, NONIE aims to promote the use of this more specific approach by its members within their larger portfolio of evaluations. This guide from the World Bank by Frans Leeuw, Maastricht University, and Jos Vaessen, Maastricht University and University of Antwerp, was developed to support this focus.
This paper from SVT Group is a catalog of methods for entrepreneurs and investors to define, measure and communicate social impact and return in privately-held companies.
This report convened by Rockefeller Foundation examines the different types of approaches to impact measurement, and how each is applicable to the various perspectives from which impact investors approach investment. The report explores answers to several questions, such as:
• How can investors know whether they are in fact helping or hindering progress toward the goal of an environmentally sustainable, healthy, dignified economy?
• How does a portfolio company’s pursuit of this goal affect risk and financial returns?
• If there is an added cost associated with pursuing this goal, what approach can be used to assess whether it is “worth it”?
The Network of Network on Impact Evaluation (NONIE) seeks to provide guidance for effective, rigorous impact evaluation. Three sub-groups have focused on particular approaches: experimental and quasiexperimental designs; other approaches to rigorous impact evaluation; and approaches suitable for specific types of aid assistance instruments such as Sector-wide Approaches and General Budget Support. This is the first of three sections produced by sub-group 2. This section (Section 1) provides an overview of impact evaluation – its definition and the context for impact evaluation in development. It sets out four different tasks involved in impact evaluation:
• Identifying impacts that are valued;
• Gathering evidence of these impacts
• Assessing the contribution of the intervention to these impacts
• Managing the impact evaluation
It provides an overview of methods and approaches that are useful in undertaking these different tasks and through this improving the rigour of impact evaluation, and provides some illustrations from evaluations that have used these methods and techniques.
This report from the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector convened by Independent Sector outlines 33 practices designed to support board members and staff leaders as they work to improve their operations. We encourage staff and volunteers to examine the Principles carefully and determine how they should be applied to their organization.
The Good Enough Guide helps busy field workers to address these questions. It offers a set of basic guidelines on how to be accountable to local people and measure programme impact in emergency situations. Its ‘good enough’ approach emphasises simple and practical solutions and encourages the user to choose tools that are safe, quick, and easy to implement.
This pocket guide presents some tried and tested methods for putting impact measurement and accountability into practice throughout the life of a project. It is aimed at humanitarian practitioners, project officers and managers with some experience
in the field, and draws on the work of field staff, NGOs, and inter-agency initiatives, including Sphere, ALNAP, HAP International, and People In Aid.
The Good Enough Guide was developed by the Emergency Capacity Building Project (ECB). The ECB is a collaborative effort by CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam GB, Save the Children, and World Vision International.
This book from Barry Schwartz addresses a great paradox of modern life: Why is it that societies where individuals are offered more freedom and choice than ever before have higher rates of depression than ever before? Schwartz argues that the abundance of choice in western society today is making us unhappy.
This is the first catalog of methods for the Double Bottom Line Project that for-profit and nonprofit social ventures and enterprises can use to assess the social impact of their activities. It analyses feasibility and credibility of 9 methods and provides examples of them in use:
- Theories of Change
- Balanced Scorecard
- Acumen Fund Scorecard
- Social Return Assessment
- AtKisson Compass Assessment
- Ongoing Assessment of Social Impact
- Social Return on Investment
- Benefit-Cost Analysis
- Poverty and Social Impact Analysis
This book, by William R. Shadish, Donald T. Campbell, and Thomas D. Cook, is a comprehensive text on experimental research. The four main topics are theoretical matters, experimentation, causation and validity.
David Henderson examines the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) doctrine, subjecting it to fundamental criticisms. In this controversial text he argues that, far from being harmless, its adoption threatens prosperity in poor countries as well as rich. It is likely to reduce competition and economic freedom and to undermine the market economy.
Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz have edited this collection of scientific research to answer the question of well-being, one of the most enduring and elusive subjects of human inquiry. The book is organised in five parts: How can we know who is happy?; Feeling Good or Bad: Pleasures and pains, moods and emotions; Personality and Individual Differences; The Social Context; and Biological Perspectives.
