Social impact is typically defined as the net effect of an action, activity, project, program, or policy on the well-being of people and the social fabric of the community. Broadly speaking, it describes a positive contribution that individuals or organizations make to the local communities in which they operate. While a narrower view held by some people is that social impact is a significant, positive, change that addresses a pressing social challenge.

Common Ways to Make an Impact

Some of the most common ways to make a social impact include:

• Improving the health of vulnerable people by ending hunger, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture; or by ensuring the availability of clean water and sanitation methods.
• Providing quality education
• Improving standards of living by ending poverty, ensuring access to affordable energy, promoting economic growth and productive employment; or by building resilient infrastructure and fostering innovation.
• Improving living environments by making communities safe and inclusive, protecting the environment, including sustainable use of oceans, forests and terrestrial ecosystems.
• Reducing inequalities and providing access to justice for all

Here are some wonderful examples of organizations and businesses making a positive social impact in this world.

Social Impact is Important to Businesses

Studies have shown that people often don’t trust large companies and that companies taking steps to address social issues and community needs are trusted more than those that don’t. This increased trust can take the form of greater consumer satisfaction and loyalty, or enhanced employee commitment.

People are more likely to buy your company’s products or services, or seek employment with your company, if it is making a positive social impact on the world. This is especially true of people from younger generations. They are also likely to spend more on a product or service if it comes from a sustainable brand. Younger generations want to do business with companies that prioritize making a social impact, that are open and honest about their social efforts, and involve their customers in their good works.

A recent study from Deloitte found that 77% of more than 11,000 business leaders rated social impact as critical or important. Investors are also evolving their strategies and moving from simply considering the risk and financial return of investments, to considering risk, return and social impact.

Measuring Social Impact

If one of your organization’s goals is to make a positive social impact, then your organization will want to determine if it is achieving this goal and if the value of the impact is worthy of the resources devoted to it. Measuring your organization’s social impact is essential to securing additional funding and stakeholder support. It’s also helpful in determining adjustments or redesign to your social initiatives.

Social impact measurement is a process that begins with determining the social value of an initiative by assessing the quality of life, or well-being of the people being impacted. A person’s well-being can be affected by many things covering economic circumstances, the environment and social issues such as education, health, employment and crime.

Although social impact measurement is important, many organizations find it to be very difficult. One of the reasons for this is the amount of time and resources needed to do it. When considering how to measure an initiative’s social impact, it’s important to consider the size of the investment. If the investment is large, it may be appropriate to devote more resources to measurement in order to become more precise about its impact. However, you’ll want to be more cautious about spending too much to measure initiatives with smaller investments.

Another factor contributing to the difficulty of measuring social impact is the lack of knowledge and accepted methods for it within most organizations. This forces many organizations to seek outside assistance or research the topic themselves. There are a wide variety of measurement techniques available and several factors to consider when choosing a method for your initiative. One important factor is the intended usage of the information, whether for internal program improvement, resource allocation decisions, presentation to diverse stakeholders or to seek funding.

Social Impact Starts with Learning

Regardless of the specific definition you favor, social impact is ultimately about finding ways to make the world a better place for us all. It’s about contributing to a greater good and working for positive change. It’s more about developing strategies that make a long-term positive impact than about fixing immediate problems. Social impact begins with understanding – it starts with learning. You are invited to continue learning about social impact with the additional information and resources available in this social impact definition from Sopact.