Hello From Cambridge! Fun to see so many familiar names popping up here.
As part of our (Archipel&Co) work with a variety of clients we embed social impact measurement in the process and core of the business as an integrated part of the “regular” business intelligence or project/program management process. This means the team/client is brought through a process to identify and approve the measures, where we show them the value of the insights and actions to be guided by them, so it isn’t measurement for reporting only.
Social measures that are required by certain stakeholders or for reporting, we always try to calculate (via a theory of change or science/evidence-based proxies) via key operational KPIs so there isn’t any added measurement burden. This can be more art than science, admittedly!
The best example of this might be in the work we do with social incentives for micro and small entrepreneurs in corporate value chains. Don’t want to pitch anything here so just let me know if you’d like to learn more about it.
exactly! in my view every product or service has an inherent impact - positive, negative or it could be even both if that particular product touches diferent communities, for example. That’s why measuring + communicating becomes even more relevant
Stakeholder feedback and beneficiary feedback gets to the crux of social impact. Understanding the challenge from different perspectives before trying to solve it is essential. Having a range of stakeholders on board at the start of scoping the challenge and then bringing people along on the journey is important.
agree that engaging meaningfully with stakeholders, including affected communities, is really critical - and a core commitment that our company members make when they join ICMM. as we develop a common approach to measuring and reporting socio-economic benefits stakeholder feedback will be key, including beneficiaries
Hi Maike, thank you for this! Would you be able to share an example of how social impact has affected an investment decision in Anglo and what was the process like?
Q1: I would suggest that the area of “Social Impact” has become a bit blurred in recent years and perhaps it is now time for a revised taxonomy based approach. I have seen some stakeholders talk more about their broader stakeholder impacts on society - ranging from returns to shareholders and philanpthropy - to describe their “Social Impact”, whereas other stakeholders use perhaps more standard approach - for example only focusing on their impacts that relate to human health, poverty reduction, education etc. In short, are we all talking about the same thing (or do we think we are)?
I find IMP’s framework helpful to organize portfolio’s of “social impact” as I agree things have become blurry. They essentially help categorize from reducing harms to advancing solutions. It can be a helpful way to think about it.
There are a number of gaps in social impact measurement:
Unlike the business community there is not a common understanding of best practices
I recently did a review of all of the various measurement approaches and found over 30 - mostly doing the same thing
There is still competition in “owning” this space versus “sharing and collaborating” to find great solutions
There is some progress is this area:
The Social Progress Index has completed some excellent work globally on how to rank countries https://www.socialprogress.org/
Professor Alnoor Ehbrahim’s work on Measuring Social Change leverages proven segmentation and project management techniques for more effective impact https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/alnoor-ebrahim
Agree - though EU Taxonomy focus still very green (climate) focused! Governments have a key role to play in driving social impact measurement - articulating social needs in clear terms is an integral part of business rethinking business models and setting meaningful targets for themselves …
We shouldn’t underestimate the impact of communicating. While metrics and numbers are essential stories about how communities and individuals benefit from the social impact activities of an organization are powerful…
Hi, Olivia here from the Impact Management Project. In answer to the first Question - I always think it’s worth remembering that having a business case for measuring and managing impact (defined as a positive or negative change in social, environmental or economic outcome) is not new. Companies and their investors have been doing this in pursuit of risk mitigation or value creation for a long time - but packaged up in different language (e.g. ESG) and often focused on supply chain (i.e some stakeholders, not all). Many of these reputational risk factors that businesses look at are proxies for impact (e.g. health and safety or cost/benefit of renewable energy alternatives)
Hi Daniel, sorry for not being clearer - with investment decision I have referred to the investment in socio-economic development interventions. While we are striving towards a more rigorous ex-ante assessment of the expected outcome of projects, we are not doing this on a standardized basis yet.
Which is why we hope the NFRD review this year, as well as the recent European Commission report on supply chain due diligence will pivot towards social and start dealing with the free-riders / bring in mandatory requirements.
Yes - too much happening in the same space as opposed to setting a collective R&D programme to focus on the gaps … A critical gap in today’s universe of metrics and data sets is the availability of indicators that adequately translate macro-level needs and targets (e.g. decent livelihoods, zero poverty), into business-relevant micro-level indicators. Also important is the development of scenario relating to different impact areas. .
Thank you Andrew! Yes we find that organisations broadly fall into three categories in terms of their impact goals and therefore what data they need to manage them: Act to Avoid Harm, Benefit Stakeholders, and Contribute to Solutions.
You move from A to B by going above the threshold for what ‘good’ looks like in that context (e.g. living wage), and then you move to C when you reach those previously underserved with regard to that outcome (e.g. those previously on less than minimum wage)
On the topic of involving stakeholders, we have seen that doing so pre- and post- data collection is critical. This was most acute in the examples where we were asking questions about sensitive topics (sanitation, menstruation) or highly subjective topics (goodness, cleanliness, smell). We have developed methodologies to embed local actors in the development of the questions so the vocabulary is right, in the actual asking of those questions in teh field and then also in the interpretation of the results. It takes some experience and investment but the results are remarkably stronger–we have quantified the improved statistical differentiation and it is significant!
A2a: There are really two different questions here. The first around effectively and efficiently measuring impact is challenging. I have heard that measuring impact is like running a marathon. People do it. You can probably even do it too. It’s just going to take time and effort.
I think the biggest thing we can do to increase the efficiency & effectiveness of impact measurement is to promote the adoption of data standards for programs and their funders to adopt. One of the main challenges today is that programs all measure their activities, outcomes, and impacts in completely different ways. This means we can’t do this kind of impact measurement at scale and must go organization by organization which is extremely unhelpful and inefficient.
