On Tuesday June 3rd 2014, attendees at SIMNA NSW’s breakfast had the pleasure of hearing two tales of SROI: one from consultant, Ben McAlpine and one from Shannon Donato, not-for-profit manager.
Ben works for Social Ventures Australia (SVA) and shared his experiences of working with MadCap Café to do and then use an SROI of their impact. He said that the results:
- Confirmed the ‘knowns’
- Revealed some surprising ‘unknowns’
- Demonstrated what needed to change
One of the benefits of the SROI was that it provided a cohesive narrative of the story of changes MadCap produces in people’s lives. It helped MadCap understand the impact of their work not onlyfor their program participants, but for their employees too. Importantly, MadCap found the evidence useful for their subsequent strategic decisions.
Shannon, General Manager of Souths Cares, is a born storyteller and his tale of SVA’s measurement of their Nanga Mai Marri Program was as captivating as it was compelling. This program works with Year 10 urban indigenous youth at risk of disengaging from the education system. Shannon emphasised the need for everyone to evaluate their programs, and to build evaluation in at the very beginning. He encouraged those who embarked on evaluation to embrace it, ‘If you’re going to do it, don’t be half pregnant’!
The biggest surprise for Souths Cares was how highly the students valued the sense of ‘belonging’ the program gave them, over the development skills and schoolwork improvements that were expected to contribute the bulk of the value. The changes they are making in response to their SROI experience include:
- Strengthening the emphasis on belonging and cultural capital
- Knowledge management – documenting the great things his Mentors do to build trust with the program’s students
- Building in ongoing evaluation
- Retaining the flexibility afforded to Mentors, to enable them to continue working instinctively in response to students’ needs
Shannon told us that his funders are interested in the SROI ratio that resulted, but that he spends most of the time talking to them about the program logic and changes in people’s lives. He said Souths Cares is ‘more excited about that than the ratio or dollar figure’. Souths Cares have a two-page summary of the evaluation which they use to communicate program impact to a range of audiences.
Many thanks to Hub Sydney for hosting the event in their inviting break-out space and to SVA, MadCap and Souths Cares for sharing these entertaining people and stories with us.