DIY (Do-it-Yourself) model

Not every social enterprise wants to outsource its assessment. Not every one wants a fully integrated system either. The workbook names a third option: the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) model. Here, the enterprise builds its own assessment tool.

The workbook says social enterprises can build their own tools. These tools can be shaped to fit what their own stakeholders expect.

DIY does not mean starting from nothing. Enterprises are expected to first study tools other organisations have already built, both in India and abroad. Then they build their own version. DIY means building your own tool, not ignoring what already exists.

The DIY model is the third of three organisational models the workbook names for structuring social impact evaluation:

The workbook draws a direct link between DIY and the Fully Integrated Model: "This model is similar to integrated Social Impact Assessment in terms of its benefits and drawbacks." That means the same trade-offs apply — a customised, comparable, benchmark-friendly tool on one hand, weighed against the real cost of the financial and technical resources needed to build and run it, and the difficulty of changing tools later once they are embedded, on the other.

Illustrative figures.

Sahaara Enterprises, a for-profit social enterprise selling affordable solar lanterns to off-grid households, decides against outsourcing its impact assessment and against building a full continuous-monitoring system like Acumen Fund's. Instead it builds its own lightweight assessment tool in-house, spending ₹6 lakh over four months on design and staff training.

The tool draws directly on published frameworks — the Impact Management Project's five dimensions and elements of the Logical Framework Analysis — but customises the specific indicators to what Sahaara's own donors and investors have said they care about: hours of usable light per household per day, and household spend on kerosene avoided.

A year on, Sahaara finds the tool works well for its own reporting, but struggles to update it when a new investor asks for an indicator the original design never anticipated — precisely the flexibility limitation the workbook flags as a shared drawback of both the DIY and Fully Integrated models.

Chapter 7, section 7.2.4 (DIY), names this as the third organisational model for structuring impact evaluation, immediately after the Fully Integrated Model. Expect a question asking which model an enterprise is using when it builds and customises its own assessment tool in-house, and a question on what the workbook says DIY shares in common with the Fully Integrated Model.

• DIY is not "no standards at all" — the workbook expects enterprises to build on existing national and international tools, not invent an assessment approach from scratch.
• The workbook says DIY shares its benefits AND drawbacks with the Fully Integrated Model — a question testing this link is looking for "similar to integrated SIA," not a claim that DIY is simpler or cheaper.
• DIY is one of three named organisational models (Outsourcing, Fully Integrated, DIY) — do not treat it as a stand-alone concept unrelated to the other two.
• Do not confuse the DIY model with the DIY (Do-it-Yourself)'s underlying tools (like BACO or the Benefit-Cost Ratio) — those are specific metrics used within the Fully Integrated Model, not the DIY model itself.