Hi. My name is Unmesh Sheth. Today, we'll be tackling some of the big questions
about social impact. When you start on the journey of measuring and managing impact,
how do I know that I measure the right social impact? How can I demonstrate this social impact
and how can I scale the social impact? Before we jumping in and answering those questions
let's look at the current state of the social impact measurement process altogether.
Today's process is typically done by many different players starting with the funders
that work with the non-profits or social enterprises who ultimately work with stakeholders.
While they do that one of the standard processes that they typically work
top-down approach, designing metrics from iris plus to sustainable developing goal and that is
further drill down to the enterprise level and that's how they start measuring the impact.
One of the classic mistake of that is that the focus is really on the investors centric approach
rather than a stakeholder centric approach and as a result, enterprises are forced to focus on the
impact justification instead of impact learning. So focusing on the theory of change which is
output oriented metrics and really providing not focusing on evidence is the biggest challenge that
we see when we work with many many non-profits and social enterprises all together. Jeremy Nicholls
is the founder of Social Value International. Some of the key advice he is giving on how
can we overcome the challenges of maximizing the impact and his first advice to you is that
start focusing on impact learning, broaden your horizon and focus on your key goals altogether.
Second is have someone who is impact champion within the organizations. That's critical without
really ownership of impact-based approach this is not gonna go anywhere. Third is make sure that
not to focus overly on the cost benefit analysis but focus on the outcome that you are creating.
Third, don't just report the data. Use those data for making a decision
and forward-looking approach rather than backward looking one. That's the way to do it. So what is
the right approach to maximize social impact to the portfolios of enterprises? Well first
make sure you focus on practical and achievable solutions and second run frequent and short
evidence-based impact experiments to meet the long-term goals. So what is impact experience?
This is a very important concept that is the core of this particular theory. We often see that many
of the organization starts working on a theory of change, spend months and months on aligning
with various different stakeholders internally but that process really gets bogged down into creating
perfect theory of change that's practically unachievable and instead of creating a very
failure by having more complex theory of change, focus should be in designing
the impact experiment. So let's look at the impact experience. So as you see on the screen,
impact experience does a series of short and quicker experiments. You start with a short and
immediate outcome. For example, product adoption, in that case what's happening with the stakeholder
and how can I mix really make sure that there's a roadblock where they said because of policy
issues whether it's product adoption issues or social or financial challenges. Focus on that
and make sure that you come up with a process to listen to stakeholders through stakeholder survey,
make sure to align those kind of questions with impact management
dimensions five dimensions of impact and as you collect the data, use the decision making
in the dashboards and to understand the evidence and then start focusing on multiple dimensions
step by step and keep improving on a continuous basis. Repeat the another experiment, repeat down
the experiences until you start scaling your apprentices altogether. So to start that I'm
going to give you a very few specific examples to start with this process.To start with it,
first start with programs objectives, whether you are focusing on product or services,
make sure that you know who are your stakeholders for each objectives and how many of you are using
product and services then you should really focus on each of the stakeholders for that,
what activities do you solve in these pain points, how do you measure the selected outcome,
collect the data and create a feed back loops to start with a small group of the stakeholders.
When picking the right kind of outcome, make sure it's the highest priority for the stakeholders.
Make sure that it is within the focus of your organizations and products and services
and focus on what you can control and not is beyond your control
because there are so many different externality in ultimately achieving the outcome, but focusing on
what is your product or services can do and how can you remove the barrier in the easiest way
should be your focus. Use the resources that you have available. So rather than building
a giant theory of change focus on the outcome that is most important to your theory of change
and as you do that make sure you start designing a stakeholder survey
that aligns with five dimensions which are what, who, who is demographic, what is the outcome,
how much of scale and depth of impact and duration, what is your contribution in the process
and ultimately what is the risk there are many different type of impact risks
you can really learn just by really asking the right kind of questions.
So for example, here is a one short example of how do I understand who. So in case of some product of
services like solar lantern, target stakeholders, target stakeholder demographics,
stakeholder socioeconomics, for maybe if the focus is on a female or low income,
so make sure those key indicators or questions are included then focus on what outcome changes on who
because ultimately you want to see that certain outcome may be much higher easy to
achieve on certain demographics than others. So make sure the key outcomes are defined
and then align with the impact the who dimensions after that and based on that come up with the
questions that aligns with the five dimensions of impact. So here is an example and as you
do that you have a very systematic process that you can design and to collect the data,
design the survey, introduce the baseline survey, conduct longitudinal survey and ultimately
analyze the stakeholder outcome by demographics and improve the results and repeat continuously
the process. So thank you and I hope this was useful. Talk to us if you have any questions
and share. Look at the resources underneath the video. Thanks.