The Social Impact Index (SII) was designed with the goal of measuring the multiple factors of a social development programme which contribute to its ultimate social impact. The tool is intended to help philanthropic investors to measure the social impact of their giving and differentiate between investments, and attract new investment dollars. The tool is intended to be defensible, transparent, comprehensive, comparable, replicable and maintainable.
The social impact index tool is an index of indexes. The tool seeks to assess social impact by scoring six components which are considered to be essential for a social development project to result in improved lives and communities:
- the degree to which the project will impact wellbeing and empowerment;
- the degree to which the project results in necessary paradigm change;
- the depth and breadth of the project (both how many people benefit from a project and the various ways in which they benefit); and
- the effectiveness of the project’s implementation.
These components are the basis upon which the social impact score is determined.
Social Impact Index Factors
- Breadth of Impact – A measurement of how many people the project impacts.
- Changing Paradigms – The degree to which the project encouraged mindset and behaviour changes.
- Wellbeing – The degree to which a person experiences improved quality of life.
- Empowerment – The degree to which a person or community is empowered to do what they wish to do.
- Depth of Impact – The degree to which a project provides lasting, positive changes in a person’s life.
- Quality of Project Implementation – A measure of how well the project was implemented.
This is part of effective monitoring and evaluation methodologies.
The Theory of Change (ToC) documents the change (impact) that you are seeking for both accountability and the internal awareness of potential organizational challenges. In the ToC, the primary challenges indicated are your underlying assumptions. The outcomes and outputs outlined in the ToC will be essential in defining your metrics. Therefore, it’s important to include social impact factors when designing your ToC to assure the inclusion of factors in the key performance indicators.