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The Impactpad: A Cross-Ministerial Tool to Measure Social Impact (Netherlands)

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Impact
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In June 2018, the Dutch Ministries of Social Affairs and Employment, Economic Affairs and Climate and Foreign Affairs launched an online and open-source manual to make impact measurement accessible to social entrepreneurs. The Impactpad (or “The Impact Path: The entrepreneur’s manual to impact measurement growth”) offers entrepreneurs practical help in setting the next steps in measuring their impact. The Impactpad was developed by a consortium constituted of Avance, an impact measurement and management consultancy, Impact Center Erasmus at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Social Enterprise Netherlands, the Dutch social enterprise network, in consultation with a large number of entrepreneurs and experts. The manual is available in Dutch and English.

The manual describes general principles and steps of impact measurement, as well as specific methodologies for certain domains. The manual includes the most relevant indicators for three selected social themes: labor participation, sustainable value chains and circular economy,  according to the ministries’ priorities. At the end of 2019, the manual was updated and a fourth theme was added to the Impact Path: Active and healthy ageing.

Kodėl

The primary goals were to to make social impact measurement more affordable, and to stimulate some degree of standardisation of measurement techniques and indicators used. Impact assessments are often expensive and time-consuming, as they require specialist knowledge and methods that are not accessible to every social entrepreneur and differ at different stages of maturity in impact measurement. The manual is conceived to reduce these constraints and barriers for social entrepreneurs to measure the achievement of their social objectives with the goals of:

  • understanding of what works and why, allowing them to focus on increasing or even maximising their impact;
  • to substantiate and prove what they have achieved and communicate their social value to various stakeholders.

 

Pagrindinės veiklos

The Dutch government endorsed the recommendation by the Social and Economic Council (SER) in that regard, which also identified four other obstacles for social enterprises (limited recognition, finance, barriers in laws and regulations and government procurement). The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment,  the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, commissioned the development of an open-access online tool.

The manual discusses impact measurement as a process consisting of five successive stages:

  • Stage 1: specify the social mission and impact goal. This entails: formulating a specific social mission and determining the impact goals, allowing social enterprises to concretise the impact they want to achieve.
  • Stage 2: development and validation of the Theory of Change. This requires  framing intentions to achieve the envisaged impact through the social enterprises’ activities.
  • Stage 3: monitoring direct results (outputs). This includes: monitoring the outputs, or the direct results, of social enterprises’ activities that contribute to their mission.
  • Stage 4: measurement of mission-related effects. This comprises:  drawing up a plan that outlines how social enterprises intend to measure the key impact that they wish to achieve.
  • Stage 5: development of comprehensive insight and more robust substantiation. This involves:  making impact measurement more comprehensive and more thorough by: 1. supplementing the research social enterprises have done previously with measurements of other types of impact and stakeholders from their Theory of Change; 2. Substantiating the impact studied previously more robustly with additional measurements.

A checklist at the beginning of the manual helps social enterprises situate their stage of development on the path. For each of the five stages it then provides key guidance, tips and considerations as well as practical tools and resources. Moreover, several case studies are included across the manual, describing good practice examples of social measurement. The manual also contains a list of indicators and effects on labour participation, sustainable value chains, the circular economy and active and healthy ageing. Finally, it closes with an annotated list of references for further reading.

Poveikis

The manual allows for social entrepreneurs to easily access tailored social impact measurement guidance and tools. With more widespread use of the manual, the authors express hope that more and more social entrepreneurs will begin using the same indicators and work toward standardisation through daily practice. It harmonises the language used among different stakeholders such as financiers and municipalities. Finally, it aims to enable local authorities to contribute to the application of “The Impact Path” by drawing entrepreneurs’attention to the tool and by requesting specific data from the tool.

 

References