Image: Social return on investment.

“It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong”, so said the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes. Is this the right attitude to take when measuring the non-marketed social benefits from social services programs? Or should all possible effort be expended to precisely quantify the benefits and costs of a social services program? I would argue that it isn’t possible to precisely quantify social benefits because of the difficulty of collecting data. However, that doesn’t mean that we should accept that a social benefit is material without some transparency. And this is where the Social Returns on Investment (SROI) methodology can help improve the rigour of investment decision-making in social programs. (more…)