This document introduces social return on investment (SROI) as a framework for benefits management. SROI provides a standardized process to quantify social, environmental, and economic outcomes of projects, programs, or organizations. It involves identifying and valuing outcomes for stakeholders, mapping how outcomes are achieved, and calculating a ratio of benefits to costs. The document outlines when SROI is useful, principles of the approach, the six-step process, and examples of how SROI has been applied to evaluate family rehabilitation services, corporate social responsibility initiatives, and user experience audits. SROI aims to capture both financial and non-financial benefits in a rigorous yet transparent way to inform management decisions.

1. Social Return on Investment –
a framework for Benefits Management in every arena
Hugo Minney PhD
Benefits Management SIG
30th
October 2012

2. WHY do we want it?

3. An example: Family drug
rehabilitation services
• Why – challenges for funding, competition, other
services closing
• What – an evaluation of current, management
tool to make decisions about future, seek further
funding, open new services
• How – SROI framework, some
internal interviews some
independent consultant

4. SROI – When do you need it?
• Where profit isn’t the driving factor
• Putting a realistic (and tangible) value on what
are traditionally “soft” benefits
• The Stakeholder view (“a benefit is something
that a stakeholder perceives to be of value”)
• Rigor and repeatability – a robust approach

5. SROI – in the commercial
environment
• Secondary and tertiary effects where primary
effects don’t yield cash
• Robust process for benefits management
which is broader than simply financial
• Information to make decisions which will
maximise benefits

6. And CSR
Why do people do Corporate Social Responsibility?
•Marketing (especially those with a reputation to
repair)
•Staff retention and recruitment
•Useful corporate skills: decisions on an evidence-
base, teambuilding, goal setting
•Making a difference to your community – and
proving it

7. Measuring benefits
• First stage benefits – financial (money saved) and
non-financial (a number, but not bankable)
• Second stage benefits – a change that causes a
change that can be quantified
• Third and fourth stage – can be an estimate,
often real money saved (bankable, but
sometimes by someone else)

8. When do you use it (during a
project or programme) ?
• Project inception – the idea and the business
case
• Project delivery – make the right decisions
when obstacles occur
• Handover – clarity of expectation, reinforcing
the business case
• Service delivery – to make the right decisions

9. Social Audit is not the same thing
• Social Audit assesses how well an organisation
lives up to its ideals
• SROI evaluates a project or
service in terms of value for
money and to help make
management decisions

10. WHAT is SROI?

11. What is Social Return on
Investment?
• 7 principles
• 6 steps
• Robust internationally accredited framework
• Delivers consistently
• Used by the people who pay (statutory eg Local
Government, NHS; and non-statutory services)
and people who do (charities, not-for-profit,
commercial with social aims)

12. Principles of SROI (and why they
are important)
• Involve stakeholders
• Understand what changes
• Value things that matter
• Only include what is material
• Do not over-claim
• Be Transparent
• Verify the result

13. Steps in SROI process
1. Establish scope and identify stakeholders
2. Map outcomes
3. Evidence outcomes and give them a value
4. Establish impact
5. Calculate the SROI
6. Report, use, embed

14. Another example: Audit of User
Experience
Experts by experience audit user experience for people receiving
support
Is there any tangible value that can be banked?
•Cost of care (reduced intensity) – Commissioner
•Cost of staffing and staff turnover – Provider
•Innovation and improvement, user experience
and contract renewals – Commissioner and
Provider
•Compliance – regulator and other stakeholders
•Users – don’t spend real money so not
bankable, but quality improvement

15. What makes a good SROI
analysis?
• No preconceptions (although it does help if you
tell us about your organisation)
• A fresh pair of eyes
– Stakeholders can talk to an independent (especially
an accredited independent)
– Value isn’t necessarily what YOU say it is, it’s what the
recipient says
– What you don’t know about
• Applying the principles without compromise

16. Who’s backing SROI?
• The SROI Network, NEF, etc

17. HOW to apply it

18. Applying the concepts to
Benefits Management
• SROI is really a special form of Benefits
Management
• Many disciplines and principles are valuable for
BM – second/ third/ fourth stage benefits are
they really bankable?
• Emphasis on the benefits recipient, inspiring
people, transparency, causality, what would have
happened anyway

19. Hugo.minney@thesocialreturnco.org
07786 961837