Intended users

Every report is written for somebody. A social impact assessment report is written for its intended users.

The workbook's definition is short. The intended users are the person, persons or class of persons for whom the social impact assessor prepares the report.

They are the third leg of the three party relationship. The other two are the social impact assessor and the responsible party, the people who ran the project.

One line in the definition does a lot of work. The responsible party can be one of the intended users, but not the only one. So a project's own managers may read the report. They cannot be the only ones it was written for. If they were, the report would be the enterprise checking itself.

The workbook names who else these users are: the responsible party, the engaging party, and other stakeholders.

The definition (Chapter 5, section 5.9.1c). The intended users are the person, persons or class of persons for whom the social impact assessor prepares the social impact assessment report. The responsible party can be one of the intended users, but not the only one.

The three party relationship. A social impact assessment engagement involves three separate parties, and they may or may not sit in the same entity:

This three party relationship is the first of five elements of a social impact assessment engagement, alongside the project scope, the Social Project Monitoring Framework, the assessment evidence and the report.

Why the SAS Framework names them (5.6). The framework provides a frame of reference for two groups: social impact assessors performing assessments, and the responsible party, engaging party and other stakeholders who are the intended users of the report. Section 5.6.2c goes further and allows the assessor and the reporting entity to agree to apply the framework's principles to an engagement where there are no intended users other than the responsible party — the exception that proves the general rule.

What they do to the report (5.14). The report must address the social impact aspect that the intended users will be interested in. It is ordinarily addressed to the engaging party, but in some cases there may be other intended users. The workbook asks for reports that are stakeholder-friendly, timely, comprehensive, convincing and balanced — and "balanced" is defined as presenting findings fairly across the different perspectives and viewpoints of stakeholders, which is only meaningful once you know who the report is for.

Where it shapes fieldwork (5.11). In presenting the analysis, the assessor should tailor the qualitative discussion to sample representatives of each stakeholder group, because stakeholders have different objectives and different relationships with the social enterprise.

Illustrative engagement and figures.

Ekalavya Skills Trust, Nashik, ran a ₹1,35,00,000 welding and fitter training programme funded by a company's CSR arm. A Social Impact Assessment Organisation engages an assessor to assess the listed project.

Sorting the parties:

What follows from that list. The assessor cannot write one report for the CSR funder alone. The funder wants cost per placed trainee. The trustees want to know which of four centres underperformed. The exchange wants the regulatory sections filled. And the trainees want to know whether the promised employer tie-ups happened.

So the report addresses the aspects each will be interested in, and the fieldwork samples each group — 12 employer interviews, 8 focus group discussions with trainees, and a review of all four centres' records, rather than only the funder's own monitoring data.

The case the workbook flags. Suppose Ekalavya had commissioned the assessment purely for its own board, with no funder and no exchange filing. Then the responsible party would be the only intended user. Section 5.6.2c says the assessor and the reporting entity may agree to apply the SAS Framework's principles anyway. It is permitted — but it is the exception, not an SSE assessment.

Chapter 5 (Social Impact Assessment and Social Impact Assessors, 10% weightage) is the source: section 5.6 names the intended users in the SAS Framework's frame of reference, section 5.9.1 defines all three parties, and section 5.14 ties the report's content to what the intended users are interested in.

Two of Chapter 5's four sample questions turn on this material. The second asks what the "three party relationship involving a social impact assessor, a responsible party, and intended users" is an element of — social impact assessment engagement. The fourth offers "Intended Users" as a distractor against "Social impact assessor". Expect a straight definition question, and one testing the rule that the responsible party may be one intended user but not the only one.

• The responsible party can be an intended user but not the only one. This single clause is the most examinable line in the definition.
• Three parties: assessor, responsible party, intended users. The engaging party is not a fourth leg of the relationship — it is a role that may sit with the donor rather than with the enterprise, and the engaging party is itself typically an intended user.
• The report is ordinarily addressed to the engaging party, even though there may be other intended users. Addressee and intended user are not the same thing.
• Intended users can be a class of persons, not just named individuals — beneficiaries as a group, for instance.
• The three party relationship is one of five elements of an engagement: the relationship, the project scope, the Social Project Monitoring Framework, the evidence, and the report.
• The parties may share one entity. The workbook says the responsible party and the intended users "may be from different entities or the same entity", so a single organisation does not by itself break the structure.
• Do not read "intended users" as "beneficiaries". Beneficiaries may be intended users of the report, but direct beneficiaries is a measurement category, not a reporting one.