Navigating the Social Impact Maze: Unravelling Misconceptions and Challenge

Do you ever feel like you're navigating a labyrinth when it comes to understanding and measuring your organisation's social impact? You're not alone.

Many people find measuring financial and environmental impact much easier. While these dimensions certainly come with their own complexities, there's often a perception that they're more tangible, more quantifiable. After all, euros and carbon emissions leave tracks that can be measured and tracked with relative ease compared to the intricacies of social change.

In my recent conversations with individuals and organisations eager to understand and measure their social impact, I've encountered a common thread of challenges. From misconceptions about what social impact really means to the task of identifying social outcomes and measuring them effectively, many people express struggling with the social element of impact.

Inspired by those challenges, this blog post will demystify the main challenges I’ve been hearing around social impact measurement. I hope that it will help you to understand what that social element of impact encompasses and how you can identify specific social impacts to measure. The next post in this series will cover how to measure them in a way that supports true understanding of change.

How do we define social impact?

Social impact refers to the effect or influence that an individual, organisation, programme, project, or policy has on the social fabric of society. It encompasses the tangible and intangible changes or outcomes that result from actions taken to address social issues, improve communities, or advance societal wellbeing.

At its core, social impact involves creating positive change that leads to meaningful improvements in people's lives, communities, and the broader society.

The scope of social impact goes further than solely social connections between people and encompasses a wide range of changes, including but not limited to improvements in quality of life, access to opportunities, social justice, equity, and overall societal progress. Environmental factors can also be social outcomes, when we measure their impact on human wellbeing.

Key concepts of social impact

Social Change: Social impact involves creating positive changes in society, whether it's addressing social inequalities, promoting environmental sustainability, or improving community well-being. Social change is at the core of social impact, as it seeks to address systemic issues and improve the lives of individuals and communities.

Outcomes: Social impact focuses on outcomes rather than outputs. While outputs represent the immediate results of activities (e.g., number of meals served at a food bank), outcomes refer to the broader changes or effects that result from those activities (e.g., reduced food insecurity in the community).

People affected: Also commonly referred to as beneficiaries, the people affected are those who are impacted by, or benefit from the social impact of a particular initiative, programme, or intervention.

Theory of Change: A Theory of Change is a conceptual framework that outlines how an organisation or initiative achieves or hopes to achieve its desired social impact. It identifies the pathways, and mechanisms of change that connect activities to outcomes and helps to clarify the logic behind social impact efforts.

Sustainability: Social impact efforts should aim to create lasting, sustainable change rather than short-term fixes. This includes considering the long-term viability and scalability of interventions, as well as their potential to address root causes and systemic issues.

Equity and Inclusion: Ensuring that social impact initiatives address underlying systemic inequalities and promote the participation and empowerment of marginalised or disadvantaged groups.

“What should I be measuring?”

In the previous post in this series, we covered the basics of impact measurement and the steps involved. In this section we have provided more in-depth guidance on how to identify what to measure; a really common sticking point for organisations that are getting started with this important work.

Set goals and objectives for your activities

Thinking specifically about social change, as defined at the start of this post, what do you want your activities, services or efforts to achieve for those people who will be affected by them?

Your organisation’s goals will usually be big and broad, for example improving quality of life for the people it serves, whereas objectives will be the specific ways in which your activities or services aim to achieve that goal, for example by improving their social capital or providing clean and safe housing.

Once you know what your organisation’s or project’s social impact objectives are, you will be able to measure the change that occurs against these specific indicators of the overal change you want to achieve.

Beneficiary engagement

As we covered in the previous blog post on The Basics of Impact Measurement [LINK], it is best practice to involve the people who are affected by your activities in identifying what they have experienced. When we think about social impact, this is especially important, as we are less likely to be aware of all of the social outcomes than we are of financial or environmental ones.

When we engage the people that are affected by our activities, there are some specific things we want to learn from them to inform our understanding of the social impact being created. We need to find out what change has been created by what we’ve done; whether that is a positive or a negative change, an expected one or an unexpected one. The changes described by stakeholders help you understand the outcomes of your program - the real-life effects it's having on the people it serves. Those outcomes are what you’ll measure.

It is useful to get an understanding from the people affected of what those outcomes look like for them; how do they know the outcome has been achieved? This will support you in identifying appropriate indicators to measure over time to demonstrate the change that has occurred.

Indicators

Once you begin measuring your impact, you will have established through beneficiary engagement what outcomes occur, and what those outcomes look like for the people affected. You can use that insight to identify what things should be measured to show that a change has occurred i.e., your indicators. This is usually a collection of different metrics that point to one overall change, and more often than not includes both subjective (e.g. feelings) and objective (e.g. incidence) indicators. 

You can also use existing research to inform what indicators you choose to measure, based on how your outcomes have been measured for other accounts of impact. There are many scientifically validated tools proven to measure all sorts of outcomes, like improved social capital, self-esteem, physical health, education performance and quality of life. Alternatively, you can consult with experts in the specific area you are measuring to identify appropriate indicators.

Navigating the intricacies of social impact measurement can indeed feel like unravelling a maze, particularly when compared to the seemingly more straightforward realms of financial and environmental metrics. However, by understanding the core concepts and challenges surrounding social impact, we can begin to demystify this process and hopefully after reading this post, you feel like you’re on your way.

As we journey through this process, it's crucial to acknowledge the uniqueness of each organisation and initiative. Tailoring measurement approaches to specific contexts ensures that we capture the full breadth of social impact, contributing to meaningful and sustainable change in society.

This post is the second in a series of posts that The Outcome will contribute to the Social Value Ireland blog in 2024. Check back here or on the Social Value Ireland website for the next instalment in a few weeks.