SROI (social return on investment) is a simple metric intended to define an organization’s productivity. It calculates how much good an organization does with a certain amount of money (think: the number of people that achieve food security for every $10K invested).
The problem is, many people oversimplify this metric. As a result, funders end up rewarding nonprofits that produce relatively superficial impacts but at greater quantities than those organizations engaging in the often harder, and more expensive, work required to solve deep social problems. If we aren’t careful, SROI (or its analog, cost per outcome) could become the next overhead myth—a well-intentioned metric that ends up doing more harm than good.
In this on-demand session, our team reviewed the good, the bad, and the ugly of SROI. They dove into the right way to calculate different types of impact, how to easily—and accurately—evaluate the performance of alternative investments, and how to definitely never, ever use SROI.
After watching this webinar, you will:
- Know how to calculate the SROI of your grantees’ efforts in three steps.
- Understand how to properly contextualize your nonprofits’ data, so as to not over- or undervalue their results.
- Gain a strategic decision-making framework for using SROI to support your company’s goals.
Speakers:
- Sara Ansell, Senior Manager of Social Impact, True Impact
- Gabe Cohen, Director of Marketing, True Impact
Ready to use SROI to accelerate your corporate philanthropy? Sign up for a demo to see how True Impact can get actionable data for your CSR programs in as little as three months.
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