Creating Measurement Culture

In 2010, a Canadian charitable organization that promotes youth leadership hired Social Asset Measurements to help measure the impact of their work over the last three years. This organization, which supports a diverse range of youth-led arts and cultural programmes, very little documentation on their operations and processes, had never undertaken an evaluative study, and although they were strongly tied to their community, had not documented their impact in any way. SAM helped them select indicators, assisted in collecting data on participants, and analyzed this information using our Social Network Analysis and Social Valuation methodologies. The findings were surprising:
For every dollar that went into the organization’s arts program, three dollars of social value were created. Most SROI reports would have stopped there, but we wanted to push the envelope.

• Using our Social Valuation service, they found that even though arts programming was creating a great deal of employment outcomes, men were 46% more likely to experience these outcomes over women.
• They also found that recurrent participation was much lower than they had assumed.

Through their engagement with SAM, this charitable organization catalyzed a community dialogue on evaluation, involving several community leaders and organizations to help other groups measure and manage impact.

 

Managing Social Value, Creating Organizational Sustainability

In 2010, an organization with a mandate to promote health and the appreciation for the environment through athleticism sought to understand its social value. The organization generated revenue through business-to-business sales, yet was still grant-dependent. They wanted to find out if they could take some of their resources allocated to grant applications and fundraising, diverting them to focus more on their core program offering.

By working with SAM, they discovered that less than 10% of the value they were generating was being captured. The remaining 90% was accruing to their participants and the communities they served at the expense of previously unaccounted-for staff effort. This led them to design pricing packages for participants and generate sales from athletic groups within communities.

By implementing a strategy to measure and understand their social value, they were able to change their business model, reduce their grant-dependency and lower staff turnover.