SROI is the use of money to portray the impact that a social event could produce, and it allows sponsors to gain a basic understanding of the impacts of a project. For the sake of convenience, it is recommended that items that can be directly measured by monetary value should be utilized as the outcome indicator. For instance, institutions for ex-mentally ill patients may hold Human Libraries to help rehabilitating patients assimilate into society, and prevent relapse of their disease. Such reduced medical costs could be measured by monetary value and can be measured in SROI.

Project teams could invite service users to take part in a questionnaire survey in order to understand the perceived monetary value by them at the end of the project. However, the investigator must stress to the beneficiary that the investigation is not for use on charging them, and should guide them to evaluate the project based on the changes in affection, knowledge and behaviour among them. Investigators could provide reference values, such as the price of similar services (private or public sector) to assist the respondent to give a monetary value as the answer.

Any interventions on users aim to foster positive changes among them. Information on the 3-levels of changes serves as proof of effectiveness. The first level is the subjective response or feeling. For example, sense of wellbeing, feeling of perplexity, trust among people, sense of support. The second level is knowledge, skills and attitude. For example, vocational training, learning how to deal with interpersonal relationships, conflicts, grasping a language, attitude towards ethnic minorities or family etc. The third level changes in behaviour, for example, smoking, self-harming, healthy diet, being polite, reducing use of plastic bags etc.

Besides the 3-level of changes, social return on investment (SROI) and unit cost may also be included in proposals to highlight the project’s cost effectiveness. Project’s SROI could be used as a comparison: each dollar of subsidy contributing 3 to 4 fold of social impact would be considered really ideal. If there is no readily available or widely accepted method to quantify the social impact, unit cost may be utilized to calculate the subsidy required for each beneficiary. Project managers may compare unit costs across different social welfare projects. If there are only a few social welfare projects of the kind, projects with similar concept may be used as a reference.

In the formulation process, we should consider how the activities impact the beneficiaries in attitude, knowledge and skills and behaviour aspects (3-level of change model). Upon identifying measurement targets, we should use self-report questions such as I think/ I believe/ I can etc. to measure every change among service users. A 1-5 point scoring scale could be utilized as well, as an odd number of score increments could be convenient to find out people with neutral views, and their comments could bring important information on the impacts of the project. Lastly, the length of questionnaire should ideally be limited to 2 pages. Designers of the questionnaire might conduct a pilot test to minimize flaws and to predict scores.

Questions for different beneficiaries and project nature could be found under the “Survey Question Bank” tab on the JC Fullness SIM Coaching Scheme Webpage.

Applying for funding is a process of selling an issue. Project managers could first pay attention to the packaging of the issue. For example, giving the project a meaningful name and to frame the issue. Following that is the management of the issue selling process, such as striving for more public exposure through channels like media reports, social media and seminars to allow the issues to be brought to a greater level of attention. Lastly, to deliver the social impact. Once the social issue is resolved, we should measure the social impact, and deliver them to important stakeholders in order to receive sustainable support.

In academic studies, we strive to collect as much data as possible for analysis to enhance the credibility of the study. However, when measuring the social impacts of a project, we would need to consider many real-life situations, for example, the engagement of the beneficiaries in the project, how to incorporate measurements with the intervention strategies and activity etc. Therefore, we often have to balance between accuracy and practicality. It would be best if a one-page questionnaire could include the 3-level of change. Because of that, we have to carefully design questionnaires to ensure that the questions could truly reflect changes in the public.

It is true that many stakeholders, such as sponsors, would consider behavioural change (level 3) to be more important than other impacts. However, instead of considering different impact as different levels, treating them as different angles or perspectives would be more reflective of a project’s social impact. For example, some projects on public education may focus on attitude changes rather than behavioural changes. Therefore, impact measurements should not be about blindly striving for higher level of impact, but rather measuring relevant impacts corresponding to the aims of the project.

Generally speaking, we have to think in 2 dimensions. First, we have to identify some useful, for example, outcomes that are worth reporting for consideration, and to consider whether the targets set would be useful in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a project upon measurement. Second, the outcome indicator has to be agreed upon by different stakeholders, such as sponsors.

Under these situations, we may take reference from similar goods or services in the market as a proxy value. For example, when we want to measure the impact of a youth mentorship programme, we may use the costs of social activities that the beneficiaries would normally use, or the market value of counselling as possible quantifying measures. Another example would be when measuring the impact of a programme for ex-offenders, we could use the percentage reduction in repeated offences and the social cost of crime as measurements.

These issues should all be attributed to the setting of a target. If the project is a new one with no prior experience, we could choose reference points from sources such as averages of the Hong Kong population or data from similar previous studies. For example, if we would like to measure the impact on the subjective wellbeing of respondents following a project, we could use the satisfaction with life scale as a measurement and compare it to the average value of Hong Kong population as a reference. Then such reference may be slightly adjusted based on the project’s targeted population and scale.