Moving on from Scaling Up: Further Progress in Developing Social Impact Measurement in the Third Sector

Abstract

In 2011, we published an article inSEAJ[Gibbon, J., and C. Dey. 2011. “Developments in Social Impact Measurement in the Third Sector: Scaling Up or Dumbing Down?”Social and Environmental Accountability Journal31 (1): 63–72] that explored various issues surrounding the measurement of social impact in Third Sector Organisations. In the little over five years since it was published, we have been surprised to discover that our article has emerged as one ofSEAJ’s most cited (and downloaded) publications. This prompted us to take a closer look at where our paper was being cited and obtain further insight as to why and how the paper has been used across a variety of fields, within both theoretical and empirical studies, by both academics and practitioners. Relevant to both researchers and practitioners, our review provides a useful snapshot that brings together a broad literature to explore how and where social impact measurement for social enterprise and values-based organisations is developing

Are foundations assessing their impact? Concepts, methods and barriers to social impact assessment in Italian foundations

“…If we turn to the methods used for conducting impact evaluation, both qualitative and quantitative evaluations have been run, with a specific emphasis on quantitative tools. This is line with the literature and in particular Polonsky et al, (2016). The few foundations that conduct social impact evaluation try to promote an "evidence-based" narrative, including both quantitative and qualitative measurement.…”

“…The contested nature of social impact affects the different approaches of its evaluation (Arvidson et al, 2013;Dey and Gibbon, 2017;Polonsky et al, 2016;Polonsky and Grau, 2011). Scholars have debated several methods to explore the contribution of nonprofit organizations in responding to needs in the nonprofit management literature, the social entrepreneurship literature and the programme evaluation literature (Bagnoli & Megali, 2009;Epstein & Klerman, 2012;Leeuw & Vaessen, 2009;Kroeger & Weber, 2014;Grieco et al, 2015).…”

“…SROI presents positive opportunities in terms of communications and organisation learnings (Maier et al, 2015). However, it suffers from difficulties in attributing a financial figure to 'soft outcomes' (Millar and Hall, 2013), it is expensive to self-administer (Arvidson et al, 2013;Millar and Hall, 2013) and it does not establish causal relationships or attribute specific results to the activity of the organisations (Arvidson et al, 2013;Dey and Gibbon, 2017;Harlock, 2013).…”

Foundations of Banking Origin and Social Rating Philosophy—A New Proposal for an Evaluation System

“…Among the most recent suggestions in terms of impact metrics and outcome measurement there are the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards and the Global Impact Investment Rating System (GIIRS). Dey and Gibbon [55] examined recent trends in scientific literature on social impact measurement and noted how the main emerging themes are the development of alternative theoretical perspectives, the development of more detailed impact measurement techniques and the necessity to obtain empirical insights from studies of implementation. Furthermore, in a variety of fields within and beyond the accounting literature, attention was also devoted to SROI and balanced scorecards [56] implementation.…”

Understanding Social Accounting Based on Evidence

“…It should be noted that, for more than 25 years, there has been a line of research on social and environmental accounting (see among others; Dey & Gibbon, 2017; Gibbon & Dey, 2011; Gray et al, 2017; Moses et al, 2020). Nonetheless, to date, and to the best of our knowledge, the emphasis has been placed either on the environment or on theoretical development (Deegan, 2017).…”