SIA Frameworks, Techniques and Standards — the ground floor

Why a framework at all?

A social enterprise says it changes lives. Fine. But how does it show that?

Without a plan, impact measurement turns into a pile of photographs and feel-good stories. The workbook says a guiding framework keeps the work purposeful, strategic and aligned with the organisation's mission. It is a roadmap for measuring and communicating the good an organisation does.

This chapter covers two kinds of tools:

1. Thinking frameworks — the Theory of Change and the Logic Model.
2. Guidelines and measurement systems — national (NGRBC), from the global investing community (IRIS+, GIIRS, GRI) and from a multilateral agency (UN Global Compact).

Theory of Change versus the Logic Model

Both are used in programme planning, evaluation and implementation. They are related. But the exam tests the differences, and the workbook lays them out in five rows.

Which one should an organisation use? The workbook's answer is practical. It depends on preferences, the complexity of the programme, and the audience. Some organisations use both to get the strengths of each.

Theory of Change, properly

The workbook gives several definitions. Learn the key phrases:

• A structured thinking process that turns a team's theories about what needs to change, and why, into a "causal pathway".
• It is not a general theory of how change happens. It is specific to the project.
• It is a step-by-step, backwards mapping process. You start from the ultimate vision and work out all the preconditions needed to reach it.
• A structured and systematic approach to link activities to their impact.
• An outcome-based method with a participatory approach. It applies critical thinking to the design, implementation and evaluation of an intervention (citing Serrat, 2017).

Why does it need to be this careful? Because the workbook says social change is not a simple process. It is a composite of cultural, demographic, economic, environmental, political, religious, scientific and technological forces.

The ToC process (Figure 6.1, from UNICEF)

The ToC describes how interventions contribute to a series of results that lead to the final intended impacts. The steps:

1. Situation analysis — identify the problem the intervention seeks to address.
2. Gather information on input, output, outcome and impact from:
   • primary sources — feedback from different stakeholders
   • secondary sources — research and documents published by the organisation and others
3. Add the contextual factors that help or hinder change, and the assumptions the theory is built on.

The workbook's worked ToC: rural youth jobs

A non-profit tackles youth unemployment in rural areas where 60% of people under 25 are jobless despite a high school education.

• Problem: youth lack technical skills and access to jobs.
• Long-term goal: enable 80% of rural youth (18–25 years) to secure stable, well-paying jobs in five years.

Around the chain sit two columns.

Assumptions — youth are motivated to complete training; the skills match local jobs; businesses will offer internships and hire; donors keep funding; facilities are sufficient; families encourage youth instead of pushing them into low-skilled work.

Risks — low engagement; training content falling behind job-market needs; employer bias or hesitation; funding drying up; gender norms restricting women; political instability, natural disasters or downturns.

Notice that each risk is roughly the mirror image of an assumption. That is the point of writing assumptions down. They are exactly where the plan can break.

Why ToC matters in social impact analysis

The workbook lists four uses:

• Strategic planning — needs, opportunities, the intended situation and how to get there.
• Implementation — to monitor indicators.
• Impact evaluation — to understand the change due to the intervention. The existing ToC can be reviewed and revised to guide data collection, analysis and reporting.
• Impact reporting — a graphical presentation of the process of change and the end result.

In an impact evaluation, a ToC helps identify (citing UNICEF):

• specific evaluation questions, especially where there is no substantive evidence yet
• relevant variables to include in data collection
• intermediate outcomes to use as markers of success when the impact will not occur within the evaluation's time frame
• aspects of implementation, and contextual factors, to examine in data collection and analysis

National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC)

The history, as the workbook tells it:

• 2011 — the Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued the National Voluntary Guidelines (NVGs) on the Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business.
• Revised in 2015 (per the workbook) to align with international standards and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

They can be used by all types of business — any size, sector, ownership or structure. Each principle comes with core elements that make it operational.

The nine principles (Table 6.2). Businesses should:

Why were they formed? The workbook says it was a step by the government to meet its international obligations under several treaty bodies. Companies are expected to integrate the core elements into strategy.

The criticism to remember: non-legal enforceability. They are guidelines, not law. So companies also use other ways to capture social impact.

Frameworks from the global investing community

A. IRIS+

• An impact accounting system for impact investors to measure, manage and optimise impact.
• Offered by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN).
• Gives generally accepted definitions of impact categories and themes, and core metrics sets by theme — a shared language for describing and comparing impact.
• Because most impact investors focus on the SDGs, its core metrics and catalogue are aligned to the SDGs.
• It measures impact through the Impact Management Project (IMP) and its five dimensions.

The five IMP dimensions (Table 6.3):

The 10 risk factors: evidence, external, execution, stakeholder participation, drop-off, unexpected impact, efficiency, contribution, alignment and endurance risk.

B. Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS)

• A comprehensive, transparent system for assessing the social and environmental impact of companies and funds, in developed and emerging markets.
• Its ratings-and-analytics approach is analogous to Morningstar investment rankings and Capital IQ financial analytics.
• The workbook says its methodology has been used by 6,000 companies.
• An online assessment tool offering both company and fund impact ratings.
• Issues a composite score of social and environmental performance. Ratings are comparable across companies and fund sizes.

C. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

• An international non-profit, established in 1997 in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
• Develops sustainability reporting standards to improve transparency and accountability on economic, environmental and social performance.
• Available to all types of organisations from different sectors.

Three categories of GRI standards:

A framework from a multilateral agency: UN Global Compact (UNGC)

UNGC helps companies align strategy and operations with ten principles in four areas, and guides them towards the SDGs.

The workbook's scale figures: over 9,500 companies and 3,000 non-business signatories from over 160 countries.

Its principles come from four sources: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the UN Convention against Corruption.

In India: the Global Compact Network India (GCNI) was formed in 2003, registered as a non-profit society. It is the Indian Local Network of the Global Compact, New York, with over 500 business and non-business participants.