Aggregation for Social Investment

Aggregating impact data across a diverse range of social interventions has been an aspiration in the impact measurement world for some time, yet few organisations have been able to find an approach which works successfully in practice to date.

At its best, meaningfully aggregating impact data can help funders and investors to assess the collective impact that their money is achieving and also help inform decision making and comparisons of effectiveness. For charities and social enterprises, aggregating data can be a useful way of summarising what they have delivered and it can also help them to benchmark or compare their work with similar organisations if data is opened up and shared.

In the impact measurement market there has been an increasing trend towards development of shared measurement frameworks and common indicator sets but there is less clear evidence about how these are being widely applied in practice. Initiatives such as the Global Value Exchange and Inspiring Impact are helping to make these resources more readily available but work still needs to be done in encouraging the use of them if we want to be able to aggregate and compare approaches.

Shared measurement works best when there is a cohort of organisations who are trying to tackle a similar social issue. Shared measurement frameworks can be a useful way to help organisations gather meaningful data and save them time in having to develop their own bespoke approach in isolation. A good shared measurement framework will provide a starting point for defining the core data that should be collected but also be flexible enough so that organisations can also gather anything else that is useful and meaningful for them.

At Big Society Capital we have developed the Outcomes Matrix to help organisations define and measure their social impact. The Outcomes Matrix represents a map of social need and is a useful starting point for organisations beginning their impact measurement journey.

We now want to do more to build on the matrix and are starting to explore how we can use shared measurement more to help charities and social enterprises with developing their impact data collection approaches. Increased shared measurement could also help us to aggregate the overall social impact across our portfolio and make more meaningful comparisons about the effectiveness of potential investments. We recognise that this is a complex area and intend to work closely with partners to help us define our potential approach.

This blog is from a wider discussion document on the challenges of aggregation, collated and put together by Social Value UK. The whole document provides perspectives from a range of sectors, and can be downloaded in full from the Social Value UK website. 

If you're interested in learning more about measuring and managing your impact, you could join Social Value UK and EVPA's upcoming Impact Management workshop: the fundamentals on October 5th, 2016.