How do you use your social impact assessment to foster a culture of learning and innovation in your venture?

- 📜 Define your theory of change to explain how your venture creates social impact from inputs to outcomes. This clarifies assumptions, goals, and indicators of success. - 🧪 Use social impact assessments (SIA) to test and validate hypotheses, identify gaps and challenges, and refine strategies. - 📈 Continuously refine your theory of change based on SIA findings to foster a culture of learning and innovation. - 🤝 Communicate your theory of change and SIA results to stakeholders to build trust and support for your venture.

- What needs to change and why? - The value proposition; the capacity for change which we provide in relation to the need for change - What activities, what outputs, what outcomes, what impact we are aiming for - Key change mechanisms involved – what it takes to move from activities to impact - Relating to which particular geographies - Who needs to play what key role in this envisaged change process (partners, stakeholders, etc.) - What key context conditions are needed for the change to be possible

To develop a viable Theory of Change, social entrepreneurs must immerse themselves and their collaborators in the discovery zone of their chosen beneficiaries and customers of your startup or scaleup social enterprise initiative. Effective Change requires proximity. Meeting with key constituents in your targeted community will lead to insightful and impactful relationships. Use your problem statement as a template to explore the underlying assumptions of your social innovation idea. The sooner you engage your target audience, the quicker you can reach your focus zone of value creation and best define the intended social impact of your enterprise.

Teorizar desde el cambio en lo social nos permitirá (entre otras cosas) al interior de nuestras estructuras organizacionales definirla como una "estrategia para la transformación social" ya que si bien nos permitirá explicar el cambio social y la interacción entre los niveles sub-estructurales, nos permitirá también valorar la incidencia en el quehacer y la cotidianidad. Reto: aterrizar la teoría del cambio a las realidades y prospección futura de la sociedad.

Consider the power of Lean Data. Impact measurement can be a significant burden to small to medium social enterprises, effectively undermining the utility of undertaking this work. Fortunately, recent social enterprise impact measurement projects incorporating lean design demonstrate ways to gather impact data quickly and inexpensively. These lean data approaches address the typical staff burden and expenses that have limited the scale and effectiveness of gathering insights that can inform operational improvement. Bottom-up nurtures the habit of listening to beneficiaries and customers to provide actionable insight into their needs and interests.

In my organisation Shecup, we started an initiative of providing pro-bono cervical cancer check ups to sex workers in Asia’s largest red light area - Sonagachi, Kolkata. We started this initiative as we realised that the leading cause of cervical cancer was having multiple sex partners. When we started this initiative with external nursing staff we faced a lot of backlash from the community as we were considered outsiders. Then we started training the daughters of the sex workers to conduct the scans and it led not only to more acceptance but also new career prospects for them. Impact- 8000 scans done in less than 2 years and 2000 early stage cancer detection!

Directly engage with beneficiaries to understand their needs, challenges, aspirations, and priorities. Conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, or participatory workshops to gather qualitative and quantitative data.

Co-creation is a powerful tool; it can even be extended beyond the SIA process and become a core principle of your venture. By involving stakeholders, particularly beneficiaries, throughout the entire lifecycle, you gain deeper user insights, increase ownership and buy-in from stakeholders, and most importantly ensure the sustainability of your venture.

I often find we try to complicate things by trying to do too many things. One thought I have heard is 'money in hand' of the target group should almost be a sole impact metric to track. What you do as a social enterprise be it skilling, market linkage, keep that core metric tracked longitudinally. Would be keen to hear other views on this line of thought.

Apply human-centered design principles to create solutions that are rooted in the needs and experiences of beneficiaries. HCD involves iterative prototyping and testing to refine ideas based on real-world feedback.

A fast growing social impact business is still a business. You are going to have lots of people in roles like accounting, tech support and logistics who aren't next to the people you are helping every day. It is incredibly important to keep them close to the mission and the impact. If you want to foster a strong and innovative culture, communicate impact regularly with your team. Post testimonials on slack. Connect people's work to the results happening in the field. Understand and highlight everyone's role in moving the mission forward. That is going to get you further than any infographic.

Encourage open feedback from stakeholders to understand the impact and areas for improvement. Use these insights to iterate and innovate, ensuring your venture continuously adapts and enhances its social impact strategies, thus creating a dynamic, learning-driven environment.

I believe there should be a mechanism to receive and give feedback from different stakeholders, as well as go beyond documenting feedback and lessons learned to integrate them continuously in the iterative process of your innovation.

Select Detail Granularity. Impact Data at an individual level can provide insights into personal experiences and outcomes, which is beneficial for projects focusing on particular behavior changes or benefits. Household data can offer a more comprehensive view of socioeconomic conditions and is helpful for projects aimed at family or home-based interventions. Understanding the community context is vital for initiatives that aim to create broader social change or involve community engagement. Aggregation data (like regional or national statistics) can be more relevant for comprehensive policy or strategic decisions.