Guidelines towards social impact measurement: the case of Ashoka's Fellowship program

Scholars and practitioners refer to the difference on society induced by social organizations as “social impact”. An increasingly debated question concerns how to measure this social impact as growing pressure seems to be put on these organizations to communicate their effectiveness, generating a profusion of costly and complex measurement tools that do not appear to suit these types of organizations. Consequently, this master thesis aims to clarify how a social organization can visualize the path toward this social impact and from there, conceive or use a methodology to measure the most relevant indicators, analyze them and communicate the results. It also highlights the difficulties faced by organizations and the opportunities such an exercise can provide. As a case study, this thesis analyzes the emblematic case of Ashoka, thus providing insight for social organizations, scholars and institutions to reflect on the concrete challenges raised by this exercise as well as share a set of best practices. The first part allows the reader to better understand how a social organization, starting with a certain amount of inputs can create a societal impact through the positive changes in behavior that its activities’ outputs generate. Then, it introduces a process composed of five stages determinant to the implementation of an impact measurement system. An organization must first clearly and collectively define the objective of the approach, then analyze its ecosystem and the stakeholder groups it contains to identify their potential contribution and incentives. It must include stakeholders continuously and throughout the different stages, as they are essential to its existence. Furthermore, the organization must put in place a methodology to collect data about its outputs and outcomes and analyze these results. It is also important for the entity to verify the quality and authenticity of the results as well as the value they bring to beneficiaries. Finally, a systematization of the data collection must be put in place and a reporting framework must be selected for communication. In the second and third section, we see the case of Ashoka which has been implementing a measurement system for more than twenty years consisting of a global quantitative survey sent to their beneficiaries (social entrepreneurs supported by the entity and called ‘Fellows’) both five and ten years after their election, followed by some local and individual “in-depth” interviews to “provide a basis for understanding Fellows’ work. These case studies carried out by Ashoka staff introduce some of the richness lost by quantitative and multiple-choice responses alone” (Measuring Effectiveness, 2006). Finally, this case analysis confirms that this exercise is complex, multidimensional and requires from the organization a full understanding of the key theoretical concepts. It provides examples of concrete challenges encountered by social organizations through the example of our case analysis, which could serve as a basis of reflection for scholars and European institutions. For instance, although Ashoka’s case shows a good knowledge of these notions, the organization also faces several difficulties. Those mainly concern the essential but delicate involvement of a representative set of stakeholders at all stages of the process and the fact that the system has to be regularly revised in a way that does not create biases nor lead to a granularity of data.