Social impact measurement: What can impact investment practices and the policy evaluation paradigm learn from each other?

Abstract

In the past decade, public authorities around the world have fostered an increasing interest for social enterprises and the ways to develop and scale them. Part of this interest has focused on better understanding social enterprises’ impact, especially through practices derived from impact investing and philanthropy such as social impact measurement (SIM). This paper looks at the differences between “traditional” policy (or programme evaluation - PE) as it is carried out by public actors and SIM as it is practiced by impact investors and the stakeholders they support (particularly social enterprises), focusing on what can be learnt from these gaps. We take the case of France, where we compare public praxis for both SIM and PE based on a documentary analysis and complementary interviews. We find that both disciplines are bridged by a common theoretical foundation and, to a certain extent, by participative approaches. We also identify three main gaps, which are (i) the way outcomes are treated in PE and SIM; (ii) how stakeholder participation is managed and how it affects the ownership of the evaluation process by the involved parties; and (iii) how metrics and indicators are approached. We assess the benefits and drawbacks associated with each gap, we determine ways to bridge them and we identify five forces contributing to their creation.