Charities, social enterprises and arts organisations are failing to measure the outcome of their work, despite the urgent demand for the third sector to prove its social return on investment (SROI). ‘Measuring social value: the gap between policy and practice’, a new report by independent think-tank Demos, provides a snapshot of the third sector’s inability to communicate the value of the services it provides at a time when funders and commissioners are seeking ever more ‘bang for their buck’. The Southbank Centre, one of 30 case studies analysed, for instance, makes no attempt to substantiate statements on its success. Like the majority of its competitors, qualitative and quantitative measurement (case studies, stakeholder feedback, pen portraits and so on) is sorely lacking.
That the third sector is struggling to identify and quantify outcomes (relying instead on outputs to demonstrate impact) may make it more vulnerable to political, rather than economic, cuts. The report investigates a range of frameworks available to assess progress. However, it argues that the sector as a whole must achieve a basic and universal standard of outcome measurement “before attempting to implement more complex and rigourous models such as SROI”.