Social Metrics

Description

“Traditional corporations create financial profit, but nonprofits and social enterprises are creating something too: social impact; that has value. At its heart, social metrics takes this basic fact and tries to make it understandable to different audiences for the purpose of engaging stakeholders and their respective competencies in solving social issues.

Social metrics is a fairly new field, and much of its growth has been motivated by “impact investing”, or socially motivated investing. The idea is that if one can communicate social impact in a language that investors and grantors understand, then funders will be more willing to donate to high-impact project.

This has led to the Social Return on Investment methodology, which uses financial analysis tools to communicate social impact. ” (http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)