Knowledge@ASB: Deep Impact

As social entrepreneurship takes off, its benefits are being enjoyed not just by the community, but also by big corporations as they increasingly hitch social responsibility agendas and dollars to innovative, sustainable social enterprises. It’s about more than “feel-good time” though. A contentious issue for social ventures, their corporate partners and government is how to monitor and measure value in a traditional business sense. Key performance indicators and social return on investment (SROI) are being applied, but the question remains: is this focus too narrow to evaluate a social venture’s real impact?