ImpactSocial Entrepreneurship

Should Businesses Measure Their Social Impact?

Should Businesses Measure Their Social Impact?
By 

Director of Content Strategy, HuffPost Creative Labs

This Nov. 4, 2012 photo released by Sears-KMart shows Food network personality Sandra Lee unloading donated items for storm victims to a food bank warehouse in the Bronx borough of New York. Lee is pleading a simple message about Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts _ Don't get complacent. Though government efforts to help those caught in the path of last week's epic storm have been tremendous, as have contributions by corporations and individual donors, Lee fears a fallout from all the goodwill and good deeds _ people outside the worst-hit areas might assume the work is finished. Lee has been working the phones to arrange corporate donations for New York's food banks and other charities, including five truckloads of food and emergency supplies from Kmart and Sears. (AP Photo/Sears/KMart, Jill Lotenberg)
This Nov. 4, 2012 photo released by Sears-KMart shows Food network personality Sandra Lee unloading donated items for storm victims to a food bank warehouse in the Bronx borough of New York. Lee is pleading a simple message about Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts _ Don't get complacent. Though government efforts to help those caught in the path of last week's epic storm have been tremendous, as have contributions by corporations and individual donors, Lee fears a fallout from all the goodwill and good deeds _ people outside the worst-hit areas might assume the work is finished. Lee has been working the phones to arrange corporate donations for New York's food banks and other charities, including five truckloads of food and emergency supplies from Kmart and Sears. (AP Photo/Sears/KMart, Jill Lotenberg)

I've spent a fair amount of the last nine years encouraging charities and social enterprises to measure their impact. Imploring, convincing, and more recently assisting charities' leaders to take this impact stuff seriously. Now I'm sure there's a pretty hefty selection bias in those I meet and with whom I discuss these issues, but it seems we're getting somewhere. Charity chief executives seem pretty convinced they need to take a more analytical, data-driven approach to managing their organisation than they thought a decade ago.

Yet in the time I've worked in this sector, I've spent almost no time talking to pure private sector businesses about measuring their social impact. However, recently I've been getting out and about among business leaders, and it seems it's starting to get onto their agendas. For example Centrica, the energy company that recently published a report claiming it contributed as much to the UK economy as the city of Manchester, and helped create enough jobs to employ everyone in Leicester.

Read more on The Guardian

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