Initiatives ... WikiVOIS
Getting material about metrics of social impact

WikiVOIS is an initiative of the SROI Network which promotes the use and development of a uniform Social Return on Investment methodology

COMMENTARY
The underlying idea of a ubiquitous system of metrics for social performance described by Jeremy Nicholls at the Singapore Impact Forum 2012 is very similar to the thinking behind the development of TrueValueMetrics and its earlier incarnations.

This is the clip containing the remarks made by Jeremey Nicholls at this Forum: Open Clip . The first part is another panelist ... Jeremy starts after about 1.20 minutes into the clip.

He makes the point that financial money profit accounting is a core part of the global financial infrastructure ... and that there is no equivalent in the world of social impact investing, and there absolutely needs to be if capital resources are ever going to be allocated in a meaningful way to social impact activities.

I am very interested in the initiative of the SROI Network, but not yet sure that there is a workable methodology equivalent to what has been done in money profit accountancy.

This Wiki is part of the SROI Network initiative, and while I like what Jeremy had to say, I am still concerned about the methodology that is getting developed. Stay tuned.
Peter Burgess

About SROI

SROI is an approach to understanding and managing the value of impact of activities. It is a framework that accounts for value. SROI is based on a set of principles that are applied within a framework.

Activities are normally delivered by organisations. SROI does not analyse the value of the organisations, but activities. The impact of these activities is the change as a result of them that occurs in the world around us and the worlds of those that are involved in the activities. The value of this impact is an assessment of how important the changes are to those who experience them. SROI does not leave the value judgement of how important a change should be to whoever is doing the analysis or to the audience. Rather, SROI assesses how important each change is to whoever experiences them, and locks this value judgement into the analysis. The total of the value of the impact, is then the overall value of the activity.

SROI explores and accounts for values for people that are often excluded from markets. These values for individuals are excluded because they are not commonly used or widely recognised. Values for organisations or parts of public sector systems are often included though, because they are commonly used or more widely recognised. And so these values have disproportionate influence in decisions compared with individual’s values. Not because anyone has decided they are more or less important, but because they have been used before or are more recognised. SROI treats these two types of values equally, in order to find out what is important. It includes both types of values in the same terms that are used in those markets – i.e. monetary terms.

About entries to the WikiVOIS database

Wikivois is built on five types of entry which are linked in a hierarchy:

• Stakeholders

• Outcome domains

• Outcomes (linked to stakeholders and in a domain)

• Indicators (linked to outcomes)

• Valuation (linked to outcomes)

Stakeholders are at the top of this hierarchy.

Outcomes are linked to a stakeholder and grouped in to one or more domains.

Indicators and valuations are always linked to outcomes.

Information relating to stakeholders, outcomes, indicators and valuations are treated as entries. Outcome domains have been determined by the SROI Network and cannot be entered by users. For suggestions on additions or amendments please contact us.

Entry ratings

Outcomes, indicators and valuations can be rated depending on how useful they are so that users can provide feedback separately to the process of developing content and so that others can see which entries have proved useful.

This is particularly important for valuations. We would like to see more commonality in valuations based as much on how often they are used as on how they have been developed. This means the ratings are as important as the editing.