Three different disciplines, routinely used as if they were one word. Here is which is which, and which one you are actually being asked for.
They overlap, they borrow from each other, and plenty of organisations use more than one. But they answer different questions, they are asked for by different people, and only one of them is ever a legal requirement.
What extra will this contract do for people, place and planet?
The wider economic, social and environmental benefit of what you deliver, over and above the thing itself. Scored in public procurement, so it is the one that wins or loses bids.
Social value and the rulesWhat is this programme's impact worth, against what it cost?
Social Return on Investment. A stakeholder-led method that puts a money value on the change you caused, and then makes you subtract everything you did not cause.
The six stagesCan we prove what the whole organisation achieved this year?
A full annual account of your social, environmental and economic performance, verified by an independent panel. The nearest thing the sector has to an audit.
Prove, improve, account| Social value | Social impact measurement | SROI | Social accounting and audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | What extra will this contract deliver? | What difference are we making, in our own terms? | What is this programme's impact worth against its cost? | Can we prove what the whole organisation did this year? |
| What it covers | One contract, bid or project | Whatever you choose to look at | One programme and its stakeholders | The whole organisation, for a whole year |
| What comes out of it | Scored commitments that become contract terms and KPIs | A bespoke report, usually narrative-led | A money value for the impact, and a ratio against cost | A verified annual Social Report |
| Money value on soft outcomes | Through a framework such as the TOM System | Usually not | Yes — financial proxies are the method | Only where a real financial value exists |
| Who checks it | The buyer, through contract KPIs | Nobody, unless you commission an evaluator | Optional assurance through Social Value International | A Social Audit Panel chaired by an approved social auditor |
| Comparable with other organisations | Yes, that is the point of a common framework | No — bespoke metrics do not compare | Rarely — different proxies and assumptions | Against your own previous years, mainly |
| Realistic if you are small | Unavoidable if you bid for public contracts | Yes, and often the sensible starting point | One or two valued outcomes, not a full analysis | Yes — the method scales down |
Whichever discipline you end up in, these govern it. They are maintained by Social Value International, the membership body for the field, and most of what makes an impact report believable sits in them rather than in the arithmetic.
The people affected decide what gets measured and how it is valued, rather than the funder or whoever is writing the report.
Say what actually changed, for whom, positive and negative, intended and not, and give the evidence for it.
Use financial proxies to bring in things that have no market price, so a change nobody trades can still be weighed against one that is.
Include information where leaving it out would change a reasonable person's decision. Materiality, borrowed from financial accounting and meant just as strictly.
Claim only the value your activity caused. This is the principle the four SROI adjustments exist to enforce.
Show the assumptions, the sources and the calculations, and be honest about what is shaky, so somebody else can judge whether they believe you.
Have the account checked by somebody independent of it, and say who checked it.
Act on what the measurement tells you. The point of measuring is to change what happens next.
The Principles of Social Value are published by Social Value International, which also runs the practitioner training and the assurance scheme.
Seventeen goals, adopted by every UN member state in 2015 with a target of 2030. They are not a measurement method and will not tell you what anything is worth. They are a shared vocabulary: corporate partners and large funders report against these numbers, so naming the goals your work touches makes your impact legible to people who have never heard of you.
Published by the United Nations at sdgs.un.org.