Social Return on Investment: Accountability and measurement in the public sector

As accountability and measurement become increasingly important in the public sector, non-profit organizations and their managers need to better understand and express their impact. In particular, they need a baseline from which to measure, specific tools to calculate value, operational systems to track data, and ability to integrate assessments of value in decision-making to improve the performance of programs.

There are many approaches non-profits can use to better understand their impact, yet the organizations that have effectively installed measurement tracking systems use them to manage information are still a small minority.

One particularly useful organizing principle for connecting an organization's activities with progress toward its mission is Social Return on Investment (SROI). SROI has existed for some time, but remains on the fringes of social sector use. The growth of social enterprise and the increasing interest of funders in results make SROI increasingly viable as a measurement system to track and express impact.

Social return on investment uses a framework comprised of financial, monetizable, quantitative, qualitative, and narrative information to create a fuller picture of the benefits of public health initiatives. Users of the framework can use the model to create a story to share with boards, the public, the media and funders – providing a range of data and allowing the listener to create their own valuing of each type of data. For example, the media may prioritize the narrative information while a funder focuses on the financial and qualitative data.