Services
Social Return on Investment (SROI)
Understanding impact increasingly means understanding the value it creates.
As resources become more constrained, organisations face growing pressure to understand not only whether their activities create impact, but how that impact relates to the resources invested. Social Return on Investment (SROI) makes this relationship tangible by translating social, environmental and economic outcomes into monetary values.
At Value for Good, we apply SROI across different organisational contexts – helping investors, companies, NGOs, foundations and public institutions understand the value of their impact and use that evidence to inform what they do next.
What makes an SROI useful?
Our experience shows that a robust SROI is built on five essential principles.
Materiality
Focus on what matters most. Identify and value the changes that are material to your stakeholders.
Stakeholder involvement
Involve stakeholders in defining outcomes and understanding what value means to them.
Evidence & transparency
Use credible data and make your assumptions, proxies and calculations transparent and reproducible.
Attribution
Understand your contribution – what is due to your activities and what would likely have happened anyway.
Usefulness
Ensure the results inform decisions, strategy and communication – not just a ratio.
How can SROI support different organisations?
Different organisations ask different questions – SROI helps provide answers that matter.
For investors, SROI helps go beyond financial returns to understand the social and environmental value created by investments.
- Assess impact alongside financial performance
- Compare and prioritise investment opportunities
- Strengthen impact due diligence
- Transparent reporting to investors & LPs
For companies, SROI makes the societal value of corporate programmes visible and comparable – strengthening the case for continued investment in impact.
- Evaluate corporate citizenship programmes
- Prioritise initiatives by social value created
- Strengthen internal buy-in and budgets
- Credible impact communication
For NGOs and foundations, SROI provides evidence of the value created for beneficiaries – supporting funding conversations and programme decisions.
- Demonstrate value to funders and partners
- Learn what drives outcomes for beneficiaries
- Prioritise programmes and allocate resources
- Strengthen grant applications
For public institutions, SROI helps assess the value of publicly funded services and use that evidence to inform policy and spending decisions.
- Assess the value of publicly funded services
- Compare policy options and interventions
- Justify budget decisions with evidence
- Transparent reporting to the public
How we support you
End-to-end support to design, deliver and use SROI to drive impact.
1
Define & Scope
We clarify objectives, stakeholders and the scope of analysis.
2
Measure & Value
We collect data, value outcomes and calculate your Social Return.
3
Analyse & Learn
We turn results into insights for decision-making and strategy.
4
Communicate & Act
We help you communicate with confidence and use insights to make impact part of your decisions.
Let’s create more impact together.
We’d love to hear about your goals and explore how we can support you.