Challenges and boundaries in implementing social return on investment: An inquiry into its situational appropriateness

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and social enterprises are increasingly under pressure to justify their use of resources and report their impact on society. Frameworks that monetize social value such as social return on investment (SROI) have emerged as a response. The existing literature highlights many benefits and technical challenges of SROI, but largely ignores strategic and organizational learning aspects. This paper explores the use of SROI in an NPO conducting cultural heritage preservation. By analyzing the challenges managers face in agreeing on a reliable (“correct”) computation of SROI and in assessing the validity and relevance (“appropriateness”) of SROI, we seek to understand the challenges and boundaries of SROI. Challenges with a reliable computation of SROI are identifying stakeholders, the choice of proxies, the time horizons, and deadweight factors. Challenges with an appropriate SROI calculation are comparability, subjectivity, legitimacy, and resource utility. We argue that SROI calculations might not be reliable or appropriate in organizations with fuzzy purposes, broad value creation goals, broad target groups, very individual or subjective proxies, strongly lagged outcomes, complex or unobservable causality, and with lack of legitimacy among stakeholders. Organizations should not trustingly adopt SROI without being aware of these limitations.     

The health and social impact of Blood Donors Associations: A Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis

Although research on blood donation abounds, no studies have yet attempted to estimate the socio-economic value generated from Blood Donors Associations (BDAs).To fill this gap, the authors ran a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis on four units of the largest BDA in Italy, the Association of Voluntary Italian Blood Donors (“Avis”).This study used multiple methods for data collection and analysis. A systematic literature review helped the identification of proper financial proxies to highlight the economic value of the social and health impacts experienced by Avis members. A focus group with key informants gathered their views on the areas of impact selected for the analysis: early detection of diseases, adoption of healthier lifestyles, social capital, human capital, personal satisfaction and reinforcement of a ‘giving culture’.Primary data collection involved (a) an Activity Based Costing analysis (b) a self-reported questionnaire to 1.066 BDA members and unassociated donors enabling the comparison of the blood donation experience of these two groups. The SROI analysis resulted in four positive ratios, varying between €1.70 and €13.80.This study contributes to the knowledge on impact evaluations in TSOs. Policy implications refer to BDAs deserving financial and material support for their capacity to generate positive social impacts.     

Measuring Social Return on Investment

Strategic decision making and evaluation in philanthropic giving and social investment requires good‐quality information about the social impacts of that investment. One way to meet this need is by calculating a social return on investment (SROI) measure, akin to the return on investment (ROI) approach used in business analysis. Despite much buzz in the field, SROI measurements are rarely used, in part because of the complexity of the calculations but also because of a number of thorny and often expensive organizational challenges associated with implementing an SROI process. This article explores these implementation challenges by comparing four social venture organizations in the health care field—two in the Netherlands and two in the United States—that have utilized some sort of SROI measurement. We summarize the SROI process and identify the specific organizational challenges in each case. Lessons learned from this analysis include the value of process versus product and the importance of fitting the type of measurement to the organizational context. We conclude with a summary of best practices for organizations and social investors who might try to make effective use of SROI measures.     

Social Return on Investment for Good Foot Delivery

This article provides reflections on a social return on investment (SROI) research process with Good Foot Delivery, a work integration social enterprise in Toronto, Canada, engaged in package delivery and employing people with developmental challenges. The article has three aims: (1) to assess Good Foot's key business inputs, activities, and outputs, and the social impact that these have had on its key stakeholders for the 2013 calendar year; (2) to critically reflect on how the research team arrived at the SROI’s inputs, outputs, outcomes, proxies, and other findings; and (3) to discuss some of the strengths and challenges of the SROI process in practice.     

Turning Social Return on Investment on Its Head

This article undertakes a critique of social return on investment (SROI), combining the existing research literature with an analysis of six case studies of supported social enterprises employing people with disabilities and other challenges that affect their access to the conventional labor market. The critique of SROI focuses on its positivist roots and its emphasis on one number, the SROI ratio. It also discusses the technical challenges in producing that number, including concerns about its reliability. The article presents the stakeholder impact statement, an approach that is rooted in interpretivism and attempts to understand the impact of enterprises through the eyes of multiple stakeholders. Unlike SROI, which is a supplement to conventional accounting statements, the stakeholder impact statement integrates financial and social impact data, thereby placing them on the same level of importance.     

Social Return On Investment (SROI): Problems,solutions … and is SROI a good investment?

The conclusion of this special issue on Social Return On Investment (SROI) begins with a summary of both advantages and problems of SROI, many of which were identified in preceding articles. We also offer potential solutions for some of these problems that can be derived from standard evaluation practices and that are becoming expected in SROIs that follow guidances from international SROI networks. A remaining concern about SROI is that we do not yet know if SROI itself adds sufficient benefit to programs to justify its cost. Two frameworks for this proposed metaevaluation of SROI are suggested, the first comparing benefits to costs summatively (the resource → outcome model). The second framework evaluates costs and benefits according to how much they contribute to or are caused by the different activities of SROI. This resource → activity → outcome model could enable outcomes of SROI to be maximized within resource constraints (such as budget and time limits) on SROI. Alternatively, information from this model could help minimize the costs of achieving a specific level of return on investment from conducting SROI. Possible problems with this metaevaluation of SROI are discussed.     

Legitimation dynamics: How SROI could mobilize resources for new constituencies

The following critical essay on the social return on investment (SROI) methodology is broken into two parts. In the first section, focusing on the categorization dynamics of the SROI, I review a set of methodological and ethical tensions surrounding the SROI, using examples from my own work and other published works using SROI. These tensions include the fact that the project requires standardization to achieve comparability while concurrently offering a flexibility in constructing a narrative of impact that is attractive to users. In the second section, focusing on the legitimation dynamics, I define a narrow scope for where, despite the aforementioned pitfalls, that the SROI can be quite effective in building a rhetorical argument for directing material resources. The essay argues that despite ongoing methodological challenges, the investor lens and market logic undergirding the metric provide a powerful frame for persuasion that can be used to construct worthiness and value creation for constituents not already constructed as such.     

Lessons from American Social Work Education: Caution Ahead

Abstract

Similar trends are occurring in Australian and US social work education, as universities increasingly adopt a rigid market orientation to tertiary education. This marketisation shapes social work education in manifold ways, including the pressure to increase revenues (and effect greater efficiencies) by expanding the size of social work programs. The unregulated growth in social work programs leads to lowered admission standards, as programs are forced to compete for students. An oversupply of social workers will also drive salaries downwards as supply eclipses demand. These issues are examined in the context of a “big” versus a “small” (fewer but more highly trained social workers) model of social work. Emphasis is placed on the lessons that Australian social work educators can learn from the challenges facing US social work education.     

Social Return on Investment Analysis

This article uses a social return on investment (SROI) methodology to analyze the social impact of a social enterprise offering a job and skills training program to an unemployed, largely female population. The social enterprise is based in Toronto (Canada) and run by a nonprofit agency dedicated to the advancement and empowerment of women, primarily immigrants, through access to employment. We focus our analysis on a job and skills training program that provides clients with the skills and tools that they need to successfully seek employment in their efforts to (re‐)enter the Canadian labor market. Our goal is to determine the tangible and intangible program outcomes by applying and testing the SROI methodology.     

Responding to People Sleeping Rough: Dilemmas and Opportunities for Social Work

Abstract

Rough sleeping refers to the state of being literally without shelter or residing in shelter not fit for human habitation. People who sleep rough are thought to be a group who experience a range of complex problems in addition to their homelessness. Despite their small numbers relative to the broader homeless population, rough sleepers have been identified as a target group for policy and practice intervention. This article critically examines outreach responses directed toward people sleeping rough. Moving beyond traditional charity approaches or interventions that “move people on”, emerging models of “assertive outreach” have been implemented in Australia as part of broader strategies to reduce homelessness. Challenging the idea that assertive outreach is a shift from a social work approach, it is argued that interventions to actively end rough sleeping are consistent with social work principles. Indeed, this article takes it that social work must advocate for the provision of affordable housing as central to rough sleeping interventions. Housing not only enables people to achieve human dignity and worth, but the linking of housing with outreach responses to rough sleepers will facilitate a trusting and effective working relationship.     

The Role of Blended Value Accounting in the Evaluation of Socio-Economic Impact of Social Enterprises

Social enterprise has become a key phenomenon in providing public services in many developed countries. The debate on the evaluation of the socio-economic impact generated by this kind of organization has gone hand in hand with the growth of social entrepreneurship. This study provides an exploratory analysis of the emerging practice of measuring the socio-economic impact of social enterprises using the theoretic construct called “Blended Value Accounting” (BVA). Among the models and tools proposed by BVA, we examine in particular the Social Return on Investment (SROI)—an instrument of causal contribution analysis—conducting a literature review on its application to the evaluation of socio-economic impact of social enterprises and on its implications for BVA. Finally, we reach a conclusion as to the role that these tools of mixed accounting and assessment might play—particularly the one examined—with respect to the positivist, critical, and interpretative theories of accounting, thus identifying the areas for further research.     

Distinguishing among publics,audiences, and stakeholders in the social media era of unanticipated publics

Public relations is failing to distinguish among publics, audiences, and stakeholders in today’s social media era, even though the business and marketing literature has begun discussing “brand publics.” This article clarifies the terms and explains the practical value in the definitions and distinctions. It also introduces a new term, “unanticipated publics” and provides a way to conceptualize those publics’ impact from the social network perspective.     

Big Data in Social Welfare: The Development of a Critical Perspective on Social Work's Latest “Electronic Turn”

ABSTRACT

“Big data” initiatives that aim to bring together and mine data from multiple databases across government and non-government agencies promise new insights into the delivery of social services. However, as debates in other disciplines have shown, big data poses challenges as well as opportunities. This article provides an overview of the ethical issues in relation to big data, which extends into an examination of the practice issues for big data applied to the social welfare sector. In particular, the claims for objectivity made for big data are problematised through an exploration of what data are available in social welfare and the processes of big data collection and analysis, which are different from, but related to, data integrity. The aim is to stimulate debate within the sector in order to contribute to the development of a critical, cautious, but open approach to social work's latest “electronic turn”.     

在国家与市场之间寻找中国社会政策改革的逻辑——“社会发展与社会政策:国际经验与中国改革”国际学术研讨会评述

综观东亚新兴经济体和欧美发达国家在社会政策领域的路径变迁,可以得出"两个转型"的基本结论,即东亚新兴经济体从单一追求经济增长逐渐向追求经济与社会平衡发展转型;欧美发达国家从倚重国家福利向倚重社会投资与国家福利平衡发展转型。这两个处于不同社会发展阶段的转型,对中国当前的社会发展和社会政策改革都有着非常重要的启示意义。中国作为具有后发优势的全球最有活力的新兴经济体,当前既需要解决经济增长与社会发展之间的失衡问题,也需要未雨绸缪,避免陷入欧美国家福利陷阱而背上沉重的财政包袱。因此,在国家与市场之间找到一条最具效率性和合理性的社会发展路径,才是符合当前中国社会政策改革的逻辑。     

Social network and family business: Uncovering hybrid family firms

What does it mean for a private enterprise in China to be embedded in a family? Our purpose here is twofold: (1) use social network analysis to describe what it means for a firm to be embedded in a family, (2) reveal from the application a new kind of firm, not family, yet akin to family. Armed with data on a large probability sample of private enterprises — a third of which meet ownership and employment criteria of being family businesses — we uncover a category of “hybrid family firms” that look modern in the style of firms that exclude family, but operate socially in ways similar to family firms. Our conclusion from summary statistics on the sample is that there are no differences in average performance level or network advantage for the three categories of businesses: family firms, hybrid family firms, and family-excluded firms. The fact that CEOs of family firms and hybrid family firms more often turn to family as key business contacts is a fact about network composition that raises no question about network mechanisms. Whether the CEO turns to more or fewer family contacts, government help is more likely with stronger political connections, and business success and survival are more likely with a large, open network. That said, the look-modern, act-traditional hybrid family firms stand alone in prospering with a CEO embedded in a closed business network. Recognition of hybrid family firms adds to the literature’s illustrations of social network analysis used to distinguish types of businesses and business people, and extends the population of organizations within which governance and strategy are likely to be better understood when viewed through a family logic.     

Building Indigenous Australian Social Work

Abstract

An Indigenous social work guided by Indigenous Australians’ participation and experience that has, at its heart, human rights and social justice is in its infancy in Australia. The present paper continues a discussion on Indigenous Australian social work theory and practice developments being generated by those working in this field. Aspects of this “praxis” include recognition of the effects of invasion, colonialism, and paternalistic social policies upon social work practice with Indigenous communities; recognition of the importance of self-determination; contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues working in partnership; the impact of contemporary racist and neocolonialist values; and rethinking contemporary social work values and practices. There is discussion of appropriation and reinterpretation of social work concepts, incorporation of international and local Indigenous theory, and the framing of social work by Indigenous Australians’ views and values.     

Social Return on Investment of an Innovative Employment Option for Persons with Developmental Disabilities

Common Ground Co‐operative (CGC) provides training, administrative, and job coach support to five social enterprises for which persons with developmental disabilities are the non‐share‐capital partners. This study examines the use of social return on investment (SROI) as a means of determining the value of program impacts related to quality‐of‐life changes for enterprise partners and their families. The process of conducting this SROI analysis is described and analyzed in terms of its utility in employment services for persons with developmental disabilities.     

Family Planning: Implications for Social Work Education

New contributions to social work education, highlighted at the 1972 International Congress of Schools of Social Work held in the Hague, generate critical questions for social work educators on theory and experience, commitment and competence, authority and freedom. The contributions of “agology” from Holland, “conscientization” from Latin America and “animation” from France give new urgency to the old problem of defining the core and boundaries of social work. The paper postulates that the boundaries must be drawn to include social action and social change, while always maintaining an identifiable professional behavior which is the product of knowledge, values, and skills associated with a professional discipline.