Flexible framework to measure impact of social finance funds

Principal Investigator: Kate Ruff, Accounting
Project Title: Flexible Framework for Impact Measurement of Social Finance Funds
Partner: 10 Carden Shared Space (10C)
Funder: SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant

This research partnership will test a new process for aggregating impact measures with the aim of solving a tension between uniformity and relevance in impact measurement. Uniform measures are needed to aggregate and compare impact. It is important to aggregate impact to communicate the collective impacts of partnerships, investments and the sector as a whole. However, the uniform measures chosen for aggregation purposes often have little relevance for the social purpose organizations that are doing the work. These organizations need customized measures that are tailored to their work and adaptable as they innovate. Relevant measures are associated with better innovation, learning and effectiveness.

This will allow the research team to determine how a flexible impact measurement framework can enhance and hinder the competing impact measurement objectives of social finance funds and the social purpose organizations they fund. This will improve impact measurement for a specific social finance fund, create tools for other social finance funds, provide a middle ground that gives social purpose organizations more power and autonomy to articulate their own measures of impact when they receive funding from social finance funds, and it deepen our understanding of plasticity in accounting and, in particular, its relevant to non-financial measures like social impact.