WEBINAR RECORDING LINK
Following our Methodology Mingler in May, we invited David Salisbury back to present on Social Return on Investment. David used a practical example, an economic evaluation of a community befriending service for women with post-natal depression. He covered how to go about doing SROI as well as illustrating some key debates, pitfalls and strengths of the methodology.
PRESENTER BIO
Dave is an experienced program evaluator from the UK. His background includes working in consultancy for a range of clients from small charities to large governmental bodies as well as leading the evaluation team for one of the UK’s largest charitable organisations. Whilst in consultancy Dave specialised in the economic evaluation of social programs, and in particular considering the use of SROI in the charitable sector. He has worked to undertake economic analysis, supported others in learning to undertake their own analysis and has contributed to national steering groups on tools that utilize health economics to assist public health decision makers in England. In addition to his expertise in the economic evaluation of social programs, Dave has also worked across several large scale health system transformation programs within the UK – including gathering insights from the development of some of the UK’s most ambitious programs aimed at improving cancer care.
PRESENTER NOTES AND RESOURCES
SROI Guides:
This is a guide to SROI from the UK Cabinet Office which is really helpful in understanding it is here: https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/files/ccednet/pdfs/2009-SROI_Guide_2009.pdf
I mentioned in the guide that my colleague and I put together on economic analysis for social projects. We’ve also got some British figures in the guide and it can be found here: http://www.livingwellwestmidlands.org/downloads/LivingWell-ABriefGuidetoEconomicAnalysis.pdf
Sources of financial proxies:
There’s actually a SROI financial proxy database that was done by SROI Canada that can be found here: https://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/CNS/Documents/fcss/sroi_canada_financial_proxy_list.pdf?noredirect=1
And this one – which I think was compiled by folks in Alberta: https://creator.zoho.com/sroiedmonton/sroi-indicators/#
There’s also this one from the UK: https://sroi.wikispaces.com/Data+sources+-+financial+proxies
It seems that there was a flurry of activity in the early years of coming up with databases of this stuff but it’s not really been kept up to date.
The study for the example:
The reference for the study we spoke about (for the report that is in the public domain) is Arvidson, M., Battye, F., and Salisbury, D. (2014) “The social return on investment in community befriending” International Journal of Public Sector Management Vol. 27, Issue 3, pp. 225-240.
It’s not as detailed as the full report as it was done primarily so that the Third Sector Research Centre could make comment on SROI more generally. The full report, for the very interested, can be found here: http://www.acacia.org.uk/files/cms/30_Acacia%20SROI%20Final%20Report.pdf. That should help with the question I about the Willingness to Pay study.
