How to Measure and Report Social Impact

Over recent years there has been a tremendous upsurge in demand for organisations — across both charitable and commercial sectors — to provide more information about their social and environmental impact. For social-purpose organisations, these developments have brought considerable opportunities as well as some new pressures. While effective impact reporting should allow organisations to tell their story more fully, a lack of standardised procedures

has often made the task seem complicated, and even daunting. At its core, impact measurement seeks to gather cru

cial information about an organisation’s activities, and use it to relate the overall change brought about to people’s lives and the environment over a particular period of time. As such it offers value on four key fronts, represented by its four primary readers.