Social impact measurement as an entrepreneurial process.

Third sector organisations are growing in scale and scope, but little is known about how they measure their social value and report their achievements. This paper explores the process of social impact assessment in charities, voluntary organisations, and social enterprises. It looks at why organisations embark on social impact measurement; what guides their decisions about how to measure this impact, and how they use the results. It argues that these decisions are shaped by the objectives of the leadership and power relationships within organisations and, more importantly, with stakeholders outside the organisation. Impact measurement can be seen as a bureaucratic form of regulation or as a form of marketing for organisations with entrepreneurial skills. The lack of consistent approaches, and the range of assumptions that need to be made in any measurement process, provide organisations with ‘room to manoeuvre’ and a source of power to influence others. In this way, the process of measuring impact can been seen as a socially entrepreneurial process – a way to create opportunities and win scarce resources needed to make a social impact

Social impact measurement and non-profit organisations: compliance, resistance, and promotion

Non-profit organisations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their social impact. This paper examines the experience and behaviour of non-profit organisations in the UK in relation to a demand for impact evaluations. It shows that organisations both accept and resist control, and use evaluations for promotional purposes. External resource providers request organisations to present evidence on how resources are used and what organisations have achieved. However, non-profit organisations can also proactively use social impact measurement as a way of exerting control over their environment through using their discretion in deciding what to measure, how to measure and what to report. The analysis uses a combination of the concepts acceptance, rejection, compliance and strategic decoupling to distinguish different organisational responses to external demands for impact evaluation

Social Enterprise Investment Fund evaluation - phase one: scoping, review and methodology development.

The £100m Social Enterprise Investment Fund (SEIF) aims to stimulate and increase the numbers of Social Enterprises (SEs) that are involved in the delivery of health and social care services via grants, loans and equity investments. The SEIF seeks to generate sufficient returns on its investments to become self-sustaining over the initial fund period (2007-2011). The evaluation of the SEIF aims to: - assess the effectiveness of the Fund in supporting SEs; - identify the impact of the SEIF including some evidence of the types of social benefits produced through the activities of SEs; and - identify lessons and make recommendations for the future improvement of the SEIF and the role of SEs in the delivery of health and social care services. The objectives of this component of the research have been to: - explore stakeholder expectations for SEIF and establish a common view of how the success of SEIF should be measured, and the mechanisms through which the SEIF is expected to achieve its outcomes; - refine the study design in the light of the programme theories which have surfaced

Social Impact Measurement (SIM) experiencing and future Directions for the third sector organisations in the east of England.

Exploring ways to measure impact is not a new focus for the third sector or social enterprises, but one that is becoming more of a concern as organisations look for ways to improve what they do and demonstrate their impact to others. In part this requires a shift in thinking from measuring outputs to measuring outcomes, and the challenge is to find ways of measuring the softer elements related to social inclusion. There is also interest from outside of organisations with pressure from philanthropic funds and public service commissioners to find ways of making their decisions on how resources are allocated. Social Impact Measurement (SIM) is the process by which an organisation provides evidence that its services are providing real and tangible benefits to people or the environment (SEEE 2009). Issue 2 of the EEDA Social Impact Measurement (SIM) project examines a range of SIM models currently adopted by Third Sector Organisations and social enterprises. The aim is “Ultimately …. to gain a better understanding of the various social impact measurement models” (EEDA ITT 2009-082). Through the study of the experiences of a set of organisations, this research will examine why organisations are measuring impact, how they are doing this, the challenges they face and how these can be overcome. This will involve a review and evaluation of a wide range of tools used by third sector organisations to measure the impact of the work they do. It will provide guidance to assist Third Sector Organisations in selecting approaches to measuring impact and help public authorities to assess the claims made by those who are using impact measurement tools. The research has involved a review of the literature and over 40 different methods commonly in use in the UK. Following the development of questionnaires, interviews were carried out with 40 third sector organisations, 32 of whom had carried out social impact measurement. A further 10 organisations or individuals providing training in social impact measurement to organisations in the East of England Region were also interviewed. Data was also collected on the issues raised by the attendees of two training courses on social impact measurement, one covering Social Return On Investment (led by Kate Lee) and one covering Social Accounting and Audit (led by John Pearce) each of which had 12 participants. Finally feedback from participants of two workshops, each with approximately 50 attendees, has been integrate

Developing a partcipatory approach to seed production and varietal selection

The performance of UK winter wheat varieties was tested under organic conditions involving farmer participation. Three breadmaking varieties (Hereward, Solstice and Xi19) and their mixture (1:1:1) were grown at 19 UK farms in 2003/04 and 2004/05. The variability of productivity on organic farms was illustrated with more variation among farm sites than among varieties. Seed health was generally high over all sites. Although the trials were successful, more time was needed at project initiation to improve farmer involvement. Some farmers expected more researcher visits, and were reticent about assessing the trials themselves. In contrast, some participants valued the variety performance data on their farms particularly when related to that of other growers. The balance between the goals of the researchers relative to the farmers needs to be defined at project initiation

The ambitions and challenges of SROI.

With the growing interest in measuring the social impact of third sector activities, there have been a range of approaches developed. One of these, social return on investment (SROI) has received particular attention and is being promoted by third sector organisations, as well as public and private bodies. This paper examines this approach in detail and identifies a series of issues that require further investigation. These include technical and methodological issues related to this adjusted cost-benefit analysis such as quantifying the value of social benefits, and attribution; the judgement involved in setting indicators; whether projects deemed successful based on an SROI analysis can provide the basis for replicability and scaling up; and the ways in which SROI is being used by stakeholders. Through examining these challenges in detail, the approaches to measuring social impact can be strengthened, standardised and made more rigorous. While the issues raised here are essential to developing SROI further, they are also valid for more general discussions regarding the proving and improving of the value added by the UK third sector

Learning and research for sustainable agro-ecosystems by both farmers and scientists.

This research explored how farming businesses learn, make decisions, benchmark and carry out their own informal experimentation to find the system that meet their needs and their local ecological context. The research also examined how farming businesses and scientific researchers can collaborate. This required a greater understanding amongst scientists and between scientists and businesses, recognising each other's strengths and weaknesses and finding ways of working together. This interdisciplinary subject will be examined by a team of social, environmental and biological researchers, examining ten cases of farmer researcher collaboration with the aim of identifying good practice in interdisciplinary research on agro ecosystems in UK agriculture

Modulation of the high mobility two-dimensional electrons in Si/SiGe using atomic-layer-deposited gate dielectric

Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET's) using atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) Al$_2$O$_3$ as the gate dielectric are fabricated on the Si/Si$_{1-x}$Ge$_x$ heterostructures. The low-temperature carrier density of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in the strained Si quantum well can be controllably tuned from 2.5$\times10^{11}$cm$^{-2}$ to 4.5$\times10^{11}$cm$^{-2}$, virtually without any gate leakage current. Magnetotransport data show the homogeneous depletion of 2DES under gate biases. The characteristic of vertical modulation using ALD dielectric is shown to be better than that using Schottky barrier or the SiO$_2$ dielectric formed by plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor-deposition(PECVD).Comment: 3 pages Revtex4, 4 figure