Whether it’s the threat of declining public funding or donors getting more discriminating, many charities are responding to this by the appliance of science.

A recognised methodology

Funders are increasingly using a project appraisal approach, which we expect to become more widespread in the wake of the Office of the Third Sector’s recent paper advocating the use of Social Return on Investment ( SROI ) to measure Social Impact.

Social Impact considers the value of the benefits generated by the work of an organisation in terms of the return generated on funding received. This is an area that is likely to be of interest to all charities, as it can help them to:

• demonstrate their effectiveness to funders;
• forecast expected benefits from planned services, including as a form of project appraisal; and
• show that meeting the mandatory public benefit test has been taken seriously within their organisation.

Setting the agenda for the sector

We believe it is important that the charity sector is proactive in setting the agenda for how it will be assessed and measured in future. As such, the  subject of Social Impact featured heavily in our recent nationwide series of seminars for charities. If you would like to register for future events, please complete these details.

We are already working with a number of high profile charities across the UK to help them to measure their Social Impact. There was extensive recent press coverage in respect of Baker Tilly’s assistance to the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils in helping to develop tools to evaluate the benefit that Sector Skills Councils bring to the UK economy. This work appears to have resulted in a change in political thinking towards the future funding and support of Sector Skills Councils by the main political parties.

Further information

A briefing paper on Social Impact is available and we have also launched a website, which explains how Social Impact works and the benefits of using its methodology in more detail. This can be found at www.bakertilly.co.uk/socialimpact. The report on the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils is also available on our site, or at www.sscalliance.org.