Social Return on Investment; What is it? And do I want it?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Social Return on Investment (SROI) has been around for quite a while, but it’s still not that well understood. Our director, Kirsty Rose Parker, completed the training back in 2010 and has used it on many occasions.

Carrying out a SROI is a robust framework for writing and describing a wider context of value. It puts a financial proxy on to a  project. It is presented in monetary terms but describes value, not actual money. Because SROI is robust and has a structured methodology, it does have some key principles.

  • Change is change and might not always be positive; there may be some negative implications
  • Stakeholders are key to the whole process; an SROI should start with stakeholders
  • SROI uses financial proxies to value change. Throughout this SROI, existing measures of other similar experiences that could also make the changes our participants told us about have been used as financial proxies.
  • It can’t include everything – not everything that changes in people’s lives is down to the project. It is just as important to know when to stop.
  • An SROI should be truthful. It goes without saying really, but on an exercise like this honesty is the best policy. For an SROI to be believable it does need to be based on evidence and data, and not over-claimed.
  • An SROI should be transparent; explaining the process to give transparency to all the decisions made.
  • Results should be verified, either by stakeholders or experts or both

Some funders do recommend ‘Social Return on Investment’ and all respond positively to it. It is a good methodology and we often follow points 1 and 2 in other evaluations, as we like the structure of reminding us to keep an open mind and see what people tell us.

It works best on projects which make big changes to peoples lives; whether that is changes to mental health or overall health, if people get jobs, or are supported to get housing, for those living with dementia or addiction although the process can be adapted to almost all projects or even an organisation as a whole.

It works best on projects which have a clear start point which can be measured, and ideally would look at value over time. If everyone started a project on the same day, it would need to allow a few months for changes to take place. If a programme allows people to join at any time it can be quicker, as then a team of evaluators would be able to talk to people who had just joined and those who had been taking part for a while in the same month.

It is a process of reflection, and evaluation. It will help teams to think about the changes they enable and to see what their impact is. It can help to build pride in a project or organisation. It can definitely increase investment as it gives investors a clear sense of the change their investment enables.

To simplify; If your project changes lives, then yes you want a SROI. If you can get hold of people taking part then yes you can do a SROI. It does need to be done during a project, it’s not impossible to do one retrospectively but it is much harder, so do try and plan one in earlier rather than later.

Give us a call if you want to know more, we’d be happy to chat through the process. If you want to do it for yourself…

More information, including a guide to working out a SROI can be found here. 

New Project: Urban Forest Accelerator

/in , /by

The Evaluator is delighted to be starting a new project with National Trust, the Urban Forest Accelerator. We are excited to be working on measuring concepts of urban tree cover, tree equity, environmental justice and developing a new approach to measuring connections. Just as joined up canopies can be more that the sum of their parts, we believe our work relationships can also mirror this and aim to develop a new way to track this over time.

Along the way, we are lucky enough to get to work with inspirational people who want to transform and green our urban areas. We get to have discussions around who should decide what is best for urban trees, to look at tree cover metric developmental work and to use words like arboriculture career pathways and knowledge. Plus, we love trees!

The Urban Forest Accelerator is part of the Future Parks Accelerator and aims to address concepts including; partnership, urban forest capacity, sustainable finance, tree equity, community engagement and learning and scaling.

 

 

Recent Client Feedback

/in , /by

At The Evaluator, we are committed to learning and improving our work over time. To make sure we achieve this we do evaluate ourselves and ask our clients to give us feedback. Here are some recent results.

 

And let’s end on a detailed client testimonial, from when The Evaluator worked in partnership with Simon Lees from Countryside Training Partnership to create an evaluation framework.

“Kirsty from The Evaluator and Simon from Countryside Training Partnership have challenged and encouraged the Climate FORTH project team and Board to think about monitoring and evaluation in a holistic way, right from this project development stage. The Monitoring and Evaluation Framework created will support our application to NLHF for delivery phase funding and show how we wish to go beyond monitoring outputs to considering the wider impact of National Lottery and other investment through our project. Communication was excellent throughout this contract and an extension was kindly accommodated when our timelines were delayed. The final report is clear, concise and well considered – spot on – we hope that we get an opportunity to enact it! The Evaluator & Countryside Training Partnership have proposed workable and proportional monitoring and evaluation methods to follow in a project delivery phase, identified suitable baseline data and provided friendly advice as we move through our project development phase. I would be pleased to recommend both parties to other organisations and partnerships looking for a personalised professional approach to this type of work.” Kate Fuller, Climate FORTH Project Manager, Inner Forth Futures.

National Research Council Report Published

/in , /by

 

Our research report is now published.

Nature and Wellbeing in the Probation Service

Lancashire Wildlife Trust Nature and Wellbeing Service started running sessions at a Probation Service approved premises in October 2020. Running a number of activities such as landscaping, growing food and working as a team, the project ran twice a week, available to the probationers living on site.

As the project was funded through Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) this evaluation was carried out following approval from the National Research Council for HMPPS and followed all their guidelines including size of summary report.

 

Click here to see three different reports we have published with Lancashire Wildlife Trust. 

 

 

New Client: National Trust

/in /by

Blue border and text saying new client national trust

The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client: National Trust.

The National Trust is Europe’s largest conservation charity, who look after nature, beauty and history for everyone to enjoy. They do it with the help of millions of members, volunteers, staff and donors. Without that, they couldn’t care for the miles of coastline, woodlands, countryside and the hundreds of historic buildings, gardens and precious collections they protect.

The Evaluator is delighted to be working with them to focus in on a people engagement evaluation, for their Green Recovery Challenge Funded Project ‘Uplands’. We will be getting to know the teams, carrying out analysis including an economic assessment of the supply chain for the project and sharing our learning through interactive workshops, which we are calling ‘Action Learning Sessions’.

 

Client Case Study: Surrey County Council working with The Evaluator

/in /by

This is a video interview, with Kirsty Rose Parker, founder and director of The Evaluator in conversation with Surrey County Council discussing an evaluation. Our thanks go to Daniel Murray, and Patricia Huertas from Surrey County Council for agreeing to be filmed for this case study.

 

Evaluation: To Have and To Heal

/in /by

When you hear Ancient Egypt for Modern Times, what do you think of? We thought of pyramids, and mummies and actually the whole of Egyptian Culture. We have loved evaluating this project around connecting modern people to ancient themes. This project aims to take the whole of that culture and make it relevant now. Of particular poignancy is how people have coped with tough times, and bereavement throughout the generations, which is timely given the last few years.

The Evaluator is delighted to be working the Manchester Museum team to understand the impact of their project, which includes an inter-generational project working across schools and care homes and an online project, of which more is below.

The official project description is:

To Have and to Heal is a unique new arts and wellbeing programme, supporting Covid recovery and resilience, which explores Manchester Museum’s World Class Egyptology collection and popular fascination with ancient Egypt. Sessions provide a safe space to share responses to and personal reflections of experiences of the pandemic.

Participating groups are invited to explore a chosen theme, through which discussion and reflections are shared in relation to the objects and the personal experiences they may connect with. Themes range from Magical Healing and Touch, to Loss and The Meaning of Art.

The interactive online programme includes real time engagement and Q & A with the Museum’s Curator of Egypt and Sudan, showcases high quality digital images of rarely seen objects from the collection, together with a behind the scenes virtual visit to the Museum’s storerooms.

​The online programme uses Manchester Museum’s collections as a catalyst for providing inspiration, and meaningful support to groups and organisations that have been heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and is open to:

*​Third sector organisations offering vital support to people at risk of social isolation, with health conditions, or caring responsibilities.

*Schools and home-schoolers seeking inspirational new resources to support ‘catching-up’ on disrupted education

*Care homes and living independent living facilities

You can find out more about the project by clicking here. There are a number of short films which can be freely viewed to explore some of the project themes and objects from Ancient Egypt on the same link.

This project is funded by The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund – delivered by the Museums Association.

Manchester Museum reopens soon at 10am on the 18th February and is opening with a free exhibition, Golden Mummies. You can find out more here. 

72 Seasons

/in , /by

72 Seasons is a project we ran which now has an online life. It helps connect people to nature, in amongst their ordinary live and has been proven to enhance wellbeing.

If you want to know more, we now have a page with all the 72 Seasons resources and information available in one place.

Click here to see everything 72 Seasons. 

 

 

 

Thanks to all our 2022 clients!

/in , /by

Images of all our client logos - there are a lot including national trust, wildlife trusts, in-situ, county councils and more

Huge thanks to all our 2022 clients, many of whom we will still be working with in 2023 and beyond.
The office is closing for Christmas on Thursday 22nd December and will reopen refreshed and renewed on Tuesday 3rd January.

Happy holidays to all.

Kirsty and all at The Evaluator