1. Session #2

2. Training Schedule Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 May 26
June 23
Sept. 22
Oct. 27
Guiding Principles
Social Value Creation
Stakeholders
Mapping outcomes
Selecting Indicators
Predictive vs. Evaluative SROI
Financial Proxies
Establishing Impact by Stakeholder
SROI calculations
Report Writing

3. Today’s Agenda Debriefing the Readings from Last Session
Outstanding Logistics (Social Evaluator)
Theory of Change Unbundled
Stages 2 and 3 of the Impact Map
Outcomes
Inputs and Outputs
Break
Materiality
Indicators
Measurement Options
Homework and One on One Follow Up
Evaluation
EXPECTATIONS: Agenda today is the SROI process from start to finish (stage 1-5, not 6 reporting)
So, after a little background and theory you will all have a go at doing an SROI through stages 1-5.

4. Learning Objectives Expand your theory of change
Identify how stakeholders can be involved in mapping outcomes and indicators
Understand the range of indicators that might be appropriate to your SROI
Identify ways to measure the difference your work makes
Articulate your standard for materiality

5. Theory of Change Part II (see guide p. 33-35)
Theory of Change is your story about how your work makes a change in the world – how you use resources to create value for communities and individuals
The Theory of Change connects the dots between the resources (inputs), activities (outputs) and outcomes achieved
Must clearly articulate the chain of events and how they are linked, “if this, then….”

6. Theory of Change Understand change
Review of where we are up to, what we have done so far.
Reminder of principle and where it fits with process - stages and framework

7. Understand Change

8. Large Group Discussion
Each organization take a turn at sharing their theory of change
Group Discussion: is the clear and effect clear; reasonable
Questions arising

9. Inputs and Outputs (see guide p. 31-32)
Inputs are things that stakeholders contribute in order to make the activity possible. You must capture the value of the investments in the program.
Outputs are a quantitative summary of activities
For each stakeholder, record on your impact map:
The inputs (the cash and in-kind resources that have been invested)
The outputs that summarise the activity
Guide p31-32
Discuss definitions as appropriate and give examples of:
Financial and non-financial inputs
Quantified outputs

10. Outcomes (see guide p. 33-35)
As a result of the outputs we deliver, there are consequences or outcomes
An outcome is
the change that results from an activity
Ask trainees to share examples and discuss difference between outputs and outcomes
Outputs are a quantitative summary of an activity. , the activity is ‘we provide training’ and the output is ‘we trained 50 people to NVQ level 3’. You can work through your list of stakeholders, describing the outputs from the activity.
Be careful not to confuse outputs with outcomes. , if a training programme aims to get people into jobs then completion of the training itself is an output, getting the job is an outcome. Identifying outcomes is not always immediately intuitive, be sure to spend sufficient time getting to grips with the theory of change to ensure that you are measuring the right things.

11. Outcomes (see guide p. 22, 33-34)
Outcomes can be:
intended / unintended
positive / negative
Outcomes can be felt in the short, medium and long term
Ask trainees to share examples or unintended or negative from their experience or impact maps before doing exercise

12. Materiality (see guide p. 23)
Less is more.
Focus on what’s most important (not just what’s easy to measure)
Provide enough detail that the reader/audience can follow the logic
Reminder of principle

13. Materiality

14. How to Chose? IF MATERIAL:
Easy to measure outcomes
Difficult to measure outcomes
Material to stakeholder
Can measure
Find ways to measure
Not material
Avoid temptation to measure
Don’t measure
Some outcomes are easy to measure some not.
A good SROI avoids the trap of just using existing or easy to measure indicators and instead focuses on what is material to the stakeholder(s)
And so, we should end up with easy and difficult to measure outcomes and nothing that isn’t material on our impact maps.
IF MATERIAL:
Identify more intangible outcomes and try to find proxies to reflect the impact
Don’t give up on valuing the benefit of “being a contributing member of society” just because it’s hard to quantify!

15. Many options for Measurement
Costs Related to Poor Living Conditions (Ambrose and Randles, 1999)
Resident Point of View
External Point of View
Poor Physical Health (H-M)
Higher Health Service Costs (H)
Person Years of Life Lost (H)
Poor Mental Health (M-NQ)
Uninsured Content Losses (H)
Higher Policing Costs (H)
Underachievement at School (M-NQ)
Extra cost of School Budget (H)
Social Isolation (NQ)
Loss of Future Earnings (M)
Loss of Talent to Society (NQ)
H=Can be Quantified
M=Could be Quantified if Had Better Data
NQ= Probably Non-Quantifiable

16. Exercise: Understanding change
Record on your impact map a description of the outcomes for each stakeholder. (What happens as a result of the “intervention” for each stakeholder?)
Describe at least one unintended or negative outcome

17. Indicators (see guide p. 38-39)
An indicator is information that allows change to be measured How will you know if the outcome will happen (or has happened)? If I ask you to ‘prove’ it, what would you show me? Think about an end user, before and after, the “intervention”. What story would they tell?

18. What is an appropriate indicator
Has most direct tie to outcome (importance)
The connection is simple to understand (logic)
Measurable, ideally by data already collected by you or others (credibility)
Sensible to measure: preferably with data already collected by existing systems/partners, but this is unlikely to be the case for ‘difficult to measure’ outcomes
Additionality assessment is a ‘gut feel’ at this stage, but if we suspect that an indicator is going to be all down to other (attribution) then we should choose a different indicator if we can at this stage or review if this outcome is material

19. Example Goal #2: Increase Prosperity of Participants Outcomes
Indicators
Increase employment income
Increased employment income
B. Increase access to benefits
Increased access to worker benefits
Decreased access to government benefits
C. Improve net assets
Decreased unsecured debt (not backed by assets)
Increased assets
Better debt to equity ratios

20. Change Compared to What?
Same person(s) before and after?
Similar person(s) who didn’t take the program (comparison group)
Data about this population from a credible research source

21. If you are Stumped…
Since SROI measures the DIFFERENCE between status quo and your program or policy results, start with the status quo:
What are the costs?
What are the results?
What do you want to change?
Why do you think it will be better than the status quo?

22. Exercise: Indicators For each outcome on your impact map, record:
A measure (indicator);
Where you got it from (source)
How long the outcome lasts (duration)
How much of the change happened (quantity)
What you are comparing against (benchmarks)
Sometimes, more than one indicator may be needed, especially for harder to measure outcomes. A common approach is to have a subjective and an objective indicator to strengthen your findings.
, you might ask service users how they feel about something (eg, their perception of their mental health), and then combine that with an indicator that can be observed by staff (whether the person is taking their meds)

23. Ways to get ideas
Check out the SROI project website which has an indicator’s database
You can select an outcome and get ideas about what indicators you could use

24. Homework: Involve stakeholders
Review Checklist for Stage 2 (p. 99/100 of the SROI Guide)
Involve stakeholders in deciding which outcomes are most material. These are the ones on which you will base your SROI analysis. Include at least one ‘difficult to measure’ outcome.
Select indicators for these outcomes

25. Homework: Reading Read pages 28-63 in the SROI guide
Read the SROI Network’s Assurance
Read the Women Building Futures Case Study. Complete a one page summary of how well it complies with the Assurance Criteria.

26. Optional Reading/Resources
Explore indicators “Prove and Improve” section of the NEF website, particularly the section on indicators
Check out the indicators database at the SROI UK website
Check out the Social Evaluator 0n-line tool
Download the Impact Map in Excel