Ok. So you are social entreprenuer. Your business works (congrats you are now in the top 10% of SEs) and you want to increase the scope of your impact. You now need additional outside investment.
Problem: how do you prove that you are already making an impact?!
1. You provide a myriad of case studies. (anectdotal)
2. You point to your output list from the original grant portion used to start the biz. (vutually meaningless; it’s likely your outputs are quantities, but aren’t they the same ones that were achieved by the last bunch in the 90’s?)
3. You contrast a video,picture, survey of your area/tribe with one today and photoshop one for the next 5 years. (getting closer, but didn’t loads of other projects work on your area? Could it be them who has succeeded in making the change?)
What’s that famous paradox? Now you really know what it is to be a social entreprenuer.
There is not one right way to tell your story, but there are better ways. We are trying to clarify what we impact and finding it challenging staying out of the above traps. In the end, I think we will go for the macro level indicators, and bet on a sustainable model that probably delivers modest impact over a longer period. At least the ROI will be greater and grant money can be directed towards other non sustainable but equally important things.
Related posts:
If the premise is ‘you need extra investment’ then how you measure impact will depend in part on what your potential investor chooses to value.
If on the other hand the premise is ‘how do we know how much ‘good’ we do per pound invested’ then we have a much more complex problem.
My advice: do whatever you need to do to get the investment you need.
Develop your own internal scorecard methodology to keeo track of the ‘good’ you do per pound invested.