As an impact measurement and management and Social Return on Investment (SROI) practitioner, I would like to talk about one of the questions that I get asked frequently: what is the difference between the economic value versus the social value of an ‘output’ or ‘outcome’? And to illustrate this difference, I will elaborate on the economic value versus social value of volunteering in the context of my previous work with The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award – Australia (Duke of Ed Australia) as a case study.
What is social value?
Before we go any further, let’s clarify what we mean by ‘social value’. Social value is the value of the changes that beneficiaries and stakeholders experience as a result of using a product or service; or taking part in a project or program. So, in this context, Duke of Ed Australia delivers a program for young people through adult mentors and they define their social value as ‘the value of the changes that young people, adult mentors and the wider society experience as a result of coming into contact with our program’. Using SROI principles and welfare economics, these changes are represented in monetary terms. The monetary value of the impact created is a way of understanding the contribution that your product, service, project or program makes to society and economy. Simply put, it is the economic value of your social impact.
Economic value of volunteering hours
Volunteering is one of the elements of our program through which a remarkable volume of economic and social value is generated. Young people who take part in a regular volunteering activity within the program and their adult mentors who support them at voluntary capacity donate millions of hours of service globally every year. Consider the ‘number of volunteering hours’ as an ‘output’. In 2017, the minimum number of volunteering hours completed by young people who completed the program in Australia was 242,684. According to 2018 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures, the value of volunteer hours in Australia in 2017 was 41.72 AUD/hour. When we adjust this value for age and multiply it with the total number of hours, it sums up to an economic value of 5.1 million Australian Dollars. In other words, young people who completed the program in Australia in 2017, donated an equivalent of AUD 5.1 million in volunteering hours to their community. Impressive, isn’t it?
But… is it the true value of the impact of Duke of Ed Australia’s program? How much of these volunteering hours can they claim as a direct output of their program? How do we know whether the volunteering activity was due to young people’s participation in the program? Would they have done it anyway? Did they do more volunteering than before while taking part in our programme? If they did, how much of the increase in their volunteering is due to Duke of Ed Australia’s program? Did the time they put in volunteering prevent them from experiencing positive impacts elsewhere? Or did they prevent others from experiencing positive impacts? So many ways we can challenge how much of that economic value we can claim.
Social value of volunteering hours
All the questions above sum up one of the key principles of SROI approach: do not overclaim. We do this by establishing impact and subsequently evaluating this impact by accounting for attribution, deadweight, displacement and drop-off. Here is a helpful visual from Collective Value Creation that explains these concepts:
When these discount factors are considered, we find the social value of young people’s volunteering due to their involvement in Duke of Ed Australia’ program in 2017 is AUD 2.1 million. Where do we get these discount factors from? We ask young people themselves through a survey– 2 other key principles of SROI: involve stakeholders and understand what changes.
Social value also considers the intention to continue volunteering and the value of volunteering hours of young people over their lifetime. When calculating this future value, ‘drop-off’ factor is taken into consideration to account for the decrease in volunteering activity. The future value of volunteering hours for young people who completed Duke of Ed Australia’s program in 2017 is estimated as AUD 9.5 million. So, Duke of Ed Australia’s combined social value of the present and the future value of volunteering hours in 2017 is AUD 11.9 million.
Understanding the value of output versus outcomes
When it comes to finding out about the difference that a program makes in young people’s volunteering and its social value, there is more to it. ‘Output’ answers the question of ‘what’. As a measure of social impact, social value does not stop at ‘what’; it goes on to explore the value of ‘so what’. So what happens when young people do a minimum of 242,684 hours of volunteering? Now we are talking about ‘outcomes’. For instance, we know from anecdotal evidence and secondary research that increased volunteering leads to improved mental health and well-being. So in our social value evaluation we also look into the social value of well-being due to increased volunteering.
I am a big advocate of understanding, measuring and communicating impact. Outputs are the low hanging fruit in the entire impact journey. They are the ones that we are most familiar with; we see them in annual reports and key promotional materials. They provide a good starting point for understanding your impact. If you don’t know your outputs start from there; how many beneficiaries, how many hours, how many events, how many touch points, how many ‘likes’? Then find a way to evaluate them to make it meaningful, tangible and relevant in your context. As discussed in this article, economic value is a great way of showing the value of volunteering hours in a community in a tangible way. As you progress further in your impact journey, social value approach may help you identify multiple ways to look at and evaluate your outputs and their outcomes and bring you closer to understanding the value of the difference you make.
Melek De-Wint 
I realy appreciate this article and indeed give me lot of ideas. I was always asking my self To establish a social values of what we are doing. But nos i have learn from you. So thank for you output impact on me and others.
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Thank you very much for your feedback Ahmed. I am very pleased to hear that you found this article useful in answering some of your questions about social value.
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