“Social Return on Investing: a Guide to SROI” published with colleagues
Peter Scholten of Amsterdam’s Scholten & Franssen, Jeremy Nicholls of new economics foundation in the UK, and Brett Galimidi and I from SVT just published a Guide to SROI Analysis that is a sort of workbook with updates that took place over 2004-2005 to the Social Return on Investment methodology. This book is a revision of the original paper Jeremy and I wrote that documented a framework that a group led by Jed Emerson and Sheila Bonini of Hewlett Foundation’s Blended Value Project brought together in 2003. This group included Peter, Jeremy, Jed, Sheila, me, and Stephanie Robertson (then of London Business School and the GSVC, now of SiMPACT Strategy Group in Canada), Robert Tolmach (then of Glasses for Humanity and now Important Gifts and Wellgood LLC in New York) and Betsy Biemann (then of the Rockefeller Foundation, now running the Maine Technology Institute.
The new book has several good current case studies and a step-by-step description of how to perform the quantitative and monetizable calculations of SROI.
We’re distributing it to faculty at business, environmental, social service and other management programs. We’re talking about incorporating it into curriculum and about updating it with the help of a university press.
We’re also looking forward to expanding on this book with a new one that includes advances in how to incorporate qualitative and narrative information, how to lower cost while improving quality, and how reports can be formatted for user-friendliness.