Impact entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs capable of combining economic success with positive social impact. To maintain a long term focus on sustainable development, they need to measure the cost effectiveness of their activities. To this end, entrepreneurs need specific techniques for the evaluation of the results obtained, in relation with the costs needed to implement the specific activities.
To meet this need, E4impact MBA includes in its curriculum a specializing course in Social Impact Measurement, with the objective of helping entrepreneurs in assessing the impact of their activities.
To give you a hint of this quite unknown issue, here below you find a brief dictionary with some of the key words of Social Impact:
- Stakeholder: those who detain an active role and/or benefits from the changes caused by the activities;
- Input: the resources invested to implement the activities;
- Output: the direct results obtained that give benefits to the customers/users;
- Outcome: the advantages, benefits and changes coming from the activities implemented;
- Influences: the possible added/alternative services provided to other entities not directly related with the company;
- Impact: the effective change caused by the activities net of the influences and the external situations.
There are different methodologies to measure the Social Impact. One of the most widely known is the SROI (Social Return On Investment) that associates a monetary value to the concept of outcome and relates it to the value of the inputs, i.e. the investment made to achieve the activity (SROI ratio).
According to the SROI methodology, measuring Social Impact requires the involvement of stakeholders: only through the expression of their opinion, it’s possible to define the importance and possibly the economic value of the benefits obtained.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more details and a case history on social impact measurement!
Valentina Langella
(PhD in management and social impact analyst)