A guide to how to measure impact for social investment
What is social impact?
Social impact is the effect on people and communities that happens as a result of an action or inaction, an activity, project, programme or policy.
Why measure social impact?
It is important for every organisation to measure their social impact so they can tell the story of the change they make - their supporters, stakeholders and funders’ will want to know this.
It is also important to measure impact for social investment. As social investment is repayable finance, and investors consider both social and financial return, they will want to see both evidence of your social impact as well as your ability to repay.
Social investors want to use their money to create impact so they want to know how investing into your organisation will make a difference, this is what differentiates social investors from mainstream investors or traditional banks.