Transcript: Impact Measurement Journeys for Social Enterprise

Music by: Ocean (2012) by John Butler https://johnbutlertrio.com/discography/ocean-2012/

Sherryl Reddy: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining today's open learning session on impact measurement journeys. It's great to see so many of us interested in the wonderful topic of impact measurement. 

My name is Sherryl Reddy from Social Enterprise Australia. We host these open learning webinars as part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative, which is funded by the Australian Department of Social Services. Our intention in creating these spaces is for people across the social enterprise community with different ways of seeing and doing things to share knowledge and experience that helps strengthen connections and collaborations across the sector. 

Today's session is convened by Social Good Outpost in collaboration with Echo Impact Group, Native and TABOO Period Products. It's a real pleasure to be joined by Lara, Ishara, Daniel and Eloise in this Zoom room today. I'm really excited to hear more about your different experiences of seeing and doing impact measurement. 

Before I hand over to Lara, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands from which we're all joining today. I'm thankful to be on the beautiful lands of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal language group. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I recognise their continuing connection to the waters, skies and lands that we all have the incredible privilege of living and working on. I also pay respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants joining today, and I recognise that your presence here holds over 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people and planet. I think for all of us here, whether you're a peak body, an intermediary, a social enterprise, a researcher, a funder, or someone who's curious about all things social enterprise, we all have the chance to take steps that value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and futures. We can all find ways to ensure that equity and justice are part of our everyday work and part of our impact. 

With that, it's a pleasure to hand over to Lara and friends for a journey into the world of impact measurement. Thank you. 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you, Sherryl. Thank you everybody for being here. I'm really excited to be presenting today and bringing to you three amazing speakers who I know have so much wisdom and practical tips about impact measurement. 

Our goal will be to present you with practical tips and case studies as well as things we have learned work that you can get started on immediately. I know impact measurement can be very complex and quite deep. We're going to enter at the accessible, approachable end and deepen throughout the session. I'm going to do a really quick introduction of all of us. 

I'm Lara Stephenson and I co-founded Social Good Outpost with my sister Elise Stephenson in 2016. Over that time we've done communication design and impact measurement specifically for small social enterprises who really need to get started. So my expertise is in that zero-to-one step. What do you do to get started?

I'll hand over to Eloise for a quick introduction of herself and her wonderful business TABOO. 

Eloise Hall: Thanks, Lara. It's great to be here. Impact measurement is an exciting topic for those of us who are in this world. I’m really grateful to be here.

I run a social enterprise called TABOO. I'm one of the Co-founders. We sell a range of organic cotton period products in Australia and we also have programs that support people with free access to product and other menstrual health education supports and advocacy.

There's lots of layers of impact in our business. We're about eight years old for context, and we're still growing and scaling - like many of the enterprises in this room I’m sure. Thanks Lara. 

Lara Stephenson: Thanks Eloise. I'll pass to Ishara. 

Ishara Sahama: Thanks Lara. First of all I'd like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you on Turrbal and Yagara Country. I would like to pay my respects to Eldest, past and present, and anyone who is listening on those lands and present on the call.

My name is Ishara. I'm Co-founder and Human Geographer of an enterprise called Echo Impact Group. We focus on systems, impact measurement and evaluation and we combine that with strategies. So, what are the strategic foundations for making sense of what you're evaluating and measuring? Then, how do you communicate and storytell that in a way that's contextually relevant to your enterprise, your organisation, or your business? That has what we call an Echo, which is a play on our own enterprise name. That's me.

Lara Stephenson: Thanks, Ishara. I'll pass over to Daniel with Native. 

Daniel Teoh: Thanks, Lara. It's great to see everyone. My name is Daniel. I'm based out of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, which is also more affectionately known as KL. Maybe you've visited.

I work with the Indigenous people here in Malaysia who are known as the Orang Asli. I run a social enterprise called Native which co-creates business ventures with Orang Asli communities with the idea of supporting them in earning a more meaningful livelihood. While also doubling as a platform for them to tell stories.

We also have a sister non-profit called Native Allies, which then looks at the role of non-Indigenous people in supporting Indigenous people so that we can all thrive together.

On the topic of impact measurement,  my golden metric here in Malaysia is that one day I want to hear an Acknowledgment of Country for the Orang Asli people. I love it whenever I join an Australian program and I get to hear one. Back to you, Lara. 

Lara Stephenson: Thanks, Daniel,  that's wonderful. 

What we’re going to do today is start with some of the basics. I know some of the people on this call might be at the very beginning of their impact measurement or impact evaluation journey.

I'm going to start with a simple question, but please feel free to elaborate on it as makes sense to you. What was something that you did that started delivering you results so that you could see the changes in the community that you were helping?

Eloise Hall: The journey that my team and I have taken with impact measurement has been a very organic one, and perhaps we didn't take any measurement of impact to start with. I suspect a lot of other enterprises might relate to those early years where you're just trying to make it work. You're in the weeds of actually building a business that functions and runs. Impact is absolutely at the heart of it, but measuring that impact was certainly not on our to-do list. It was a given that we did it. 

It was probably when we started engaging with opportunities like grants or partnerships that we started thinking we should be reporting on these metrics that we know are happening. Capturing that data wasn't the forefront. Our journey was very organic, for example, we've done all of these education workshops, and I would go back into my calendar and add up all the hours that we've done with education workshops. I hadn't tracked that data in an official context, but have receipts to collect and add up.

If this is an okay answer. It was very much as we went. It's learning along the way, which I think a lot of enterprises are good at because we're solving new problems that haven't necessarily been addressed before. I think organic learning is a natural place to start. 

Lara Stephenson: Yeah. Great, thank you. Daniel

Daniel Teoh: Yes. I took the opposite approach to Eloise. I took the nerdy approach, where I wrote down every single thing that I wanted to know and that I thought could be a potential indicator. Then I tried to measure it, which did not end very well. I realised early on that it should be something simple, and perhaps the organic way would have been better.

When we worked with Indigenous community members, we had this onboarding process where we would ask them all sorts of questions. I also found this at the time to not really be effective, nor necessarily dignifying in some sense. How it then shifted was that we only started tracking some really key metrics. So, quantitatively, because we make payments and we always have full vision of that - it became something easy to track. Then everything became qualitative in nature. When we think about narrative change and so on, of course, it's a bit more sophisticated now, but it went from 20 different metrics to two. So that's where we started. 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you. Ishara, would you have any advice for anybody wondering what's something I can get started with?

Ishara Sahama: That's a big question. I really appreciated Eloise and Daniel's answers to the previous question. It's like a combination of how I've observed it stepping into the space as a practitioner. You either have enterprises, businesses or organisations that are trying to do their daily work and make things work operationally. But then also have a mix of the purpose and knowing the depth of the work that they're doing. Also, knowing maybe I'm a bit resource-poor in actually doing impact evaluation as well, but know that it's really important. 

I would say from the experience of Echo Impact Group, a starting point is doing an internal audit. Most of the time, we have experienced the fact that those who are in social enterprises or non-profits or other types of enterprises already have the data and the stories with them. Whether it's in quantitative or qualitative form, or even talking to staff members or community stakeholders. There's already a rich tapestry of stories there. That paints a picture of how you understand what impact your organisation is already having. 

Doing an audit in a way that isn't coming down from a compliance perspective, but really deep listening to what's actually happening in this ecosystem that I'm working in. Then from there, backtracking what are these stories telling us about what's working, what's not working? Does this align with certain goals or metrics that we have to adhere to from a funding or reporting perspective? Then what goes beyond that? So I would say that a starting point is looking internally and deep listening. 

Lara Stephenson: It's a good point that we sometimes know more than we think we know. Even if it's not consistent across every client or person we work with or beneficiary, the people and organisations often do have a lot of rich data about outcomes. We can start to shape and tell stories in the beginning, while we're building up that more quantitative or consistent history.

We're going to look at different ways to focus our impact measurement. Have you experienced one or two habits that have helped you to start? Whether it's remembering to do a before-and-after survey, a check-in and check-out process, or a recurring ability to pick up data from the people that you're serving and helping. Have any of you experienced any habits or systems that have helped you to get data-gathering started and growing in a consistent manner over time? 

Daniel Teoh: I can start for this one. I think of it from the perspective of there's passive ways and then there are active ways. For example, at Native, a big metric for us is the amount of income we support communities in generating. Most of that income goes through us from paying clients before they reach our community partners, so we always know that number. It's integrated passively into our work, and I find those are usually the most sustainable metrics from the perspective of not needing too much effort. Things like the number of guests that we welcome and how many interactions we facilitate, we would always know that. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing your accounting on time.

For the more active ones, for us, because we organise around entire communities is we try to have monthly community meetings. Typically, that's where we gather the more qualitative type of data. We do reflection circles with communities, and typically that's what we look at. 

We also have an element on the guest side, thinking about how perceptions of Indigenous people change. Then we look at incorporating some level of that data gathering into our program offering. What we realised is that it's really difficult to do with tourists because nobody wants to fill out forms when they are on a holiday! 

A big part of our client groups are actually students, schools, and corporate groups. What we typically do is offer them a pre-program briefing for free to make sure that they are well behaved and knowledgeable before they go into the community. Typically, that involves them filling out a pre-perception form. Then, what we try to do after the program is to get them to fill out an equivalent post survey. What we found is that doing it digitally before they go is effective, and doing it after, you get very poor responses. Then we made it a physical card and we put a place for you to write a note to the community. We find that mixing the medium also works better in that way.

Lara Stephenson: That sounds great and I imagine that makes it much more meaningful for the visitor as well because there's that personal note. 

Ishara or Eloise, are there any habits that you have found help you gather impact or outcomes data? 

Eloise Hall: I'm happy to add to Daniel's comments. I related to a lot of those things in different ways. The active and passive measurements related to us and the way that we measure impact. As I was saying at the start, the retrospective collection of data is something that we did a lot of. Going back into the books and understanding the dollars moved and who we're working with. 

One thing that's coming to mind is the importance of having elements of impact built into your business model. For example, we chose to have a totally plastic-free range of period care. That was a choice that we made in line with the impact we wanted to make, which was consideration of the environment as well as the social impact. A decision that was in line with our values. 

Then, three years after solidifying that supplier arrangement, I thought we could actually measure how much plastic we're diverting from landfill. Because people are opting to use our product instead of a plastic product. Being able to measure that and of course we've got stocktake data on hand, so we were able to pull out the stock that we've moved and then calculate how much plastic we've diverted from landfill. That was quite a passive data collection point. It's also only thanks to ensuring the impact is integrated through all business decisions, we've been able to go back to that retrospective data and pull out other measurements of impact that we find are really important or helpful to now communicate. That was really cool to draw that comparison.

Also, with your comments Daniel, about how you interact with your clients. Another thought process behind the way we design impact measurement is making it easy for our participants. Finding the easy points of entry to do data collection, where it doesn't feel like an interrogation or you're wasting a lot of their time. 

For example, when we onboard a new client to support with free product. These are often charities and other organisations looking or caring for people experiencing disadvantage.

We take a lot of data in that one-on-one meeting. Whilst it's more of a conversation-style meeting and of course, there's consent involved in the information we're writing down. That's where we'll understand the demographic of the people they're supporting, and how many people our partnership will support. We're able to pull that information and then categorise it ourselves, in that easy entry way. We're not having a meeting and then sending them a link to fill in and tick those boxes. We can do that at once and do it in a really meaningful way. That data, whilst it's good to report on, is also important to understand in that relationship building capacity. So, integrating it in as easy a format as possible, is probably more sustainable for our time as well. 

Lara Stephenson: I love that. That's really personal and you're learning. It's a briefing and data gathering. Thank you.

Ishara Sahama: To add on to that. Wow. How do I add on to that?

From working with certain Founders who are from social enterprises and others in the non-profit space, there's always this challenge of how do we paint the picture of what we're doing in a way that's meaningful and isn't just around certain types of ways in which we visualise or communicate our impact?

Traditionally, it has been quantitative. I'm not saying that's wrong, only there's a point at which that picture ends. Then there's another side of the active or the qualitative data. Something I've observed is, we do this a lot with the people and enterprises we work with, introducing feedback loops. Whether that's internal to begin with. For people who are behind the scenes working with communities, clients or other stakeholders. What   relationship, as Eloise mentioned, and understanding are you building? Which is equally important. Not everything about impact has to be public or external. Something we talk about a lot with the work we do is that impact is a synonym for change. What change are you accounting for or facilitating or enabling?

Then, from the external side, what picture is being shown or painted by the work that you're doing, and being shown to others as an enterprise? If it's heavy on one side towards the quantitative, what implications or intentions are being painted there?

Versus, if everything's anecdotal. So finding that balance and knowing what processes you need to balance the type of data that you need to gather, as well as what's actually relevant to gather. Not every single thing needs to be accounted for.

That goes back to, as Eloise mentioned, what's relevant to your business model and to the impact model of your enterprise? What story needs to be told? And I know these are all questions and rhetorical. As a practitioner, from an evaluation coming and supporting businesses, this is what we come in and ask. Normally owners, executive staff and others, particularly those who are working on the service level, really understand what's relevant to understand the change that they're facilitating with their work. 

It’s a mix of: What do you want to know internally? What do you want to show externally? What processes - quantitative and qualitative - do you need to complement that? Usually what we find is feedback loops help a lot because you can revisit what worked, what didn't work, and what needs to change. Perhaps bring in different people, and different perspectives to fact-check and understand what's working and not working.

Lara Stephenson: Thanks, Ishara. That's a really good point you make about what's internal and what's external. At least for social enterprises, we don't all have to legally report externally. There's some reporting for accreditation. Non-profits often do have that reporting requirement. I think we're still gaining a level of confidence and maybe capability to tell our stories more frequently and in more approachable ways.

It doesn't always have to be the yearly report. How can we tell it throughout the year, and at times when we've had an achievement? We don't have to wait 11 months till the next annual report to share that story. 

We're going to talk about business and impact models which I think is very important. For the moment, how are you using or how are you seeing people use their impact data to grow? This might be to get more funding, or to attract clients or communicate with the outer world better about what you're doing. Which can create more understanding and empathy, and change perceptions as well as those direct client links. Some people will be looking for paid clients, some will be looking for funding, others are trying to change perceptions in a community or a space. Have you seen any examples of people using data, impact outcomes or storytelling really well to achieve something along those lines? Or you, yourself, of course.

Eloise Hall: I think about the social enterprise sector more broadly. We are required and important models of business for the change that we broadly want to see in the world.

That’s definitely true in many contexts. 

The obvious one for me is the consumers. People really want to be given an opportunity to buy a product or a service that they know is making an impact. So that storytelling piece of impact to consumers is so important and is what helps social enterprises stand out against the typical for-profit business models. So impact is a really golden piece of sharing that needs to happen in the sales part. Of course partnerships and grants and people want to know that the money that they're investing in you is making an impact.

That's a really important and obvious point that you've already drawn out, Lara. 

The other thing that's on my mind, and maybe because I went to a human resources conversation last night at the University of South Australia. They were talking about the importance of growth and also connection and importance in the workplace. So I think there's also relevance of that data collection for your internal staff, especially when staff are tasked with roles and jobs that don't typically see an outcome. If they're really in the data or their activities are sometimes mundane and repetitive, being able to communicate the impact that their contribution to that workplace is having, is so important. That creates a beautiful environment. An environment where people feel proud about the work they're doing. It’s going to make a healthy workplace as well.

The external is so important but I think there is that internal piece that is really valuable too. One that we're certainly working with and making sure those check-ins are frequent, and we're taking that impact data and using that as an opportunity to celebrate the efforts that we've made internally. You can share that with partners as well. That's a couple of thoughts. 

Lara Stephenson: That's great. If I can ask one small follow up question. How have you communicated with customers? Has it been on the packaging? Has it been social media? Is there some way that you've gotten a good response from customers? 

Eloise Hall: I think customers just want to know that the business they're supporting with their dollar is making an impact. Explaining your business model probably does most of that effort. Knowing we can hold that business to account on what they're claiming to do and that's probably where a lot of the strength comes from. 

Then when you share the impact that the business has been able to make, that's when the post-purchase celebration comes. Where people go, I bought that product or I've used that service before so therefore I can feel proud about this impact measurement. There's probably a couple of stages where impact celebration can come into play, and maybe that's more the customer retention aspect - ‘this made me feel good because not only did I feel good when I purchased it, I felt even better when that company explained to me the impact that I helped contribute to’. Bringing people along with those multiple phases is important.

It's certainly not one purpose. People will also relate to different types of impact. For example, we've got a category of customers who are really invested in the environmental aspect of the offering we have. Then another aspect that are more invested in the social. Making sure that information is available so that people can learn and find a place of relation in the way that's most valuable to them. 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you. Ishara or Daniel, have either of you seen impact storytelling or communication used in a really effective way? Either in your work or in your ecosystem.

Daniel Teoh: Yeah. At the risk of being a bit self-absorbed at Native we've done some pretty interesting discoveries of our own impact metrics. When we started off, the big metric we always anchored on was the raw amount of income that we were able to generate for communities and also by extension ourselves. I realised that whenever we presented that as the core impact we created, it didn't seem very meaningful from an external perspective. If you think about income opportunities, maybe supporting Indigenous people into school so they can get a corporate job would be a better way of generating income for them.

What we found that was meaningful for us, which changed the trajectory of how we look at things, was the number of guests that we served every year. That was important because it became an indicator of how many cross-cultural interactions we were able to facilitate. For example, we do over a thousand every year with our community's unique guests.

What we found is that funders find that very interesting, because there's no similar operation like ours, here in Malaysia at least, that is effective at inviting people into Indigenous communities to learn firsthand. If you go into a room of school students or corporate people most of the time, if you ask: how many of you have had an interaction with an Orang Asli person? It'll be maybe one person. So by using that metric of number of guests, we were able to position ourselves as the facilitator between communities. 

For schools, if you want someone who has a particular narrative and who is an “expert” at building this type of connection, then we would be your choice. That led us to shifting from mainly the tourist market and we ended up having a really good stronghold in schools, universities and then corporate companies. When we leaned into that it became the foundation for a lot of our growth after. 

Lara Stephenson: How did you help people understand the benefit of having that cross-cultural connection? 

Daniel Teoh: Then it becomes about the qualitative information that you generate. The biggest thing that we always hear is, I did not know xyz. Although that sounds like quite a rudimentary thing, we're able to demonstrate that by interacting with Indigenous communities, most people receive some type of benefit themselves. 

The way that we position it is that by interacting with Indigenous communities, it's not necessarily for their benefit, but it's for yours. It shifted our value proposition as well. So you don't necessarily buy because you want to support a particular community, although that's part of the choice, but it's more about making it known that there's value for you as well, as a customer. 

Lara Stephenson: That's fantastic. I really like that perspective shift. Especially in Malaysia, where you're saying that you're a real frontrunner. There's also that opportunity here in Australia for us to keep learning from what we're all discovering. 

Ishara, did anything come to your mind about seeing some good, effective communications to get funding or more customers or change hearts and minds?

Ishara Sahama: First I'd like to recognise that both Daniel and Eloise come from social enterprises that are very good at communicating the impact that they have. TABOO was an enterprise that I was looking up as an example a couple of years ago, actually. It's a full circle coming in and talking on a webinar together. 

To touch base on a comment made earlier about what you mentioned Lara, about impact being recognised through annual reports and that being a form of impact. In my experience, and talking to a range of different people across the social enterprise space, values and perspectives are changing a lot around what impact is. What does it actually mean? And what do we do with it? Annual reports are not enough anymore. That's one thing that I'm seeing is shifting.

There are, I won't name them all, but there's a range of different social enterprises that are actioning the shift from reporting from an annual report basis to what's my impact report, and what are the communication collaterals that I can take from that? And storytelling more consistently between a yearly or half-yearly interval.

I will name one enterprise, and it's not a social enterprise, but ReachOut has a really good way of reporting the way they enable change. Their impact reports are done in a very accessible manner. That's another thing, is that most of the time, impact traditionally and non-traditionally is communicated through reporting a 10, 15, 20, sometimes 50 page report. Not everyone has the time to read these reports, unless you're working and living and breathing this work. People who are customers and consumers want to have a quicker and more relatable way of understanding what impact means, what it looks like and how it's actioned through social enterprises or any other type of enterprise.

For example, ReachOut has shorter forms of their impact report, which is really easy to digest. That's a good way to communicate the key highlights of what they've achieved at a particular point in time, but also for them to understand internally what were the key messages? What were the important highlights for them to listen and learn from? And that they can revisit when they do their next reporting. So that's something I observed. 

Certainly, that's something that I'm seeing is changing across the sector, across industries, is how reporting exists. It doesn't have to exist as a report. It might exist as a video, a cartoon or a documentary. The mediums in which it exists are also changing. This is where it goes back to what's actually relevant for the organisation? What's contextually relevant for the business and impact model of that enterprise? How do their customers, consumers, stakeholders and funders actually interact with the ecosystem, and the impact that's being enabled through this work? What's most meaningful to communicate that?

You know this well Lara, because this is part of the work that you do with communications for impact. That's some of the things I've observed, and certainly it's a good shift. I think there's this challenge with people in this space also wanting to make sure that they're balancing how to ensure their enterprise is continuing in a stable, financially stable way without compromising the story, the impact and the change that they're enabling. This is where impact measurement or systems impact measurement, and communication becomes really interesting and relevant. 

Lara Stephenson: Yeah, I agree. Thank you. That internal and external piece - while you're making something for the external, and learning so much from it internally, because you have to be precise, accurate, and distill a lot of information. It can be such a good strategic tool for looking back and looking forward. It also helps you make sense of where you're going and helps you do evaluation and program reviews a bit more often. 

We are moving onto ‘business model versus impact model’. We can only be around to make impact if we have our business model sorted. I was going to mention a few foundational practices, tools and processes here, and then let's build on that and talk more about the business and impact model. 

Things I’ve found useful is to make sure that you have your logic model or theory of change - whether it's for your program or your business as a whole. It is important to check that you do have a logic model or a theory of change or both, so that you know what direction you're headed in. There are so many frameworks that can help you, and support with that - whether you're working towards a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), or some other specialised outcome. And of course, start small so that you're not trying to measure everything at once.

Having a simple logic model - a couple of columns that lead you through a clear process. It can help to get things out on paper, and you can start to make sure you’re actually doing that work. It makes the work make sense, so that this work leads to that outcome and it's something you can test. Many people will know this back to front but it's a really useful process to take yourself through, along with things such as lean impact canvases, or social enterprise or non-profit business model canvases.

These are tools that we always cover first in my workshops with social enterprises. If there are many options on your plate and you're inspired to go in lots of directions, sit yourself down for an hour and work through a Theory of Change or Logic model. There are heaps of templates online, and you can do it with sticky notes with your team or just yourself. I found that they bring a lot of clarity and focus to all of the great possibilities, you can take yourself on an adventure with. 

One of the key questions we wanted to focus on for this chat was, how do you balance financial sustainability with impact delivery? I'll let you have a think about that while I tell a very quick story. 

In the beginning, to get B Corp Certification or walk towards it at that time, you had to give away 10% of your hours. That meant that for every 10 paid hours of work, you had to give one. We've recently heard that providing wraparound support, doing our social impact, and even measuring it, can be so costly and is not always commercially covered by our products and services. So, acknowledging that is a larger theme, and we might not have the perfect answer - how have our panellists balanced impact delivery and their businesses' very important financial sustainability?

Eloise Hall: Maybe I'll add to Daniel's comment earlier, which is that passive measurement. I haven't framed it as that, so thank you for that language, Daniel. Now I know what to call it. That's probably the biggest time-saver. We don't have to start from scratch - the data is there, it's just collating it. Don't get me wrong, collating it takes time. 

We just did our impact report recently, and that's weeks of work, many revisions and you pour a lot of time into it. A learning from that experience was - and this is relevant to grants and financial reports for specific projects - to include that time in the budget. I can say that from experience and mistakes in the past. You do the project, and then you have to report on that, and we've run out of money, we've run out of time. Putting that in the budget and being realistic about the fact that it is a part of the work because that's what the funder requires. That's what you need to do for future work. My advice would be don't ignore it; it is a part of the business. 

I think a lot of social enterprises are beautifully natural at integrating impact into their business. That's where that beautiful sweet spot is, when doing business is doing good.

Of course there are some models where there is an impact cost and it's not as simple as that, but the social enterprises that really inspire me are the ones that are creative, where the impact is embedded into the day-to-day activity. It's not dependent on certain outcomes to see that impact happen. It just happens as a business.

The beauty of this sector is that it's so diverse, and that's a much easier statement to say than it is to do. It's not for everyone.

Lara Stephenson: Did you deliberately build an impact model alongside your business model when you started out?

Eloise Hall: When we started, and this is still true, we want to use all of our profits for ending period poverty. Addressing inaccessibility, access to period products, menstrual health education and also challenging policy to make sure that everyone has access to period products. That's where our company profits are committed.

Thankfully very early on, we realised that the profit idea isn't going to come for years. So what we did was, we launched the Pad it Forward model. We invited people to buy our pads on behalf of someone else at risk. That meant that we had a mechanism that didn't cost us, in that those products were being purchased by the public, and we had that product to contribute to our Pad it Forward partners before we had a profit to fund that impact work. That's one small way we integrated the opportunity for impact. We wanted to make an impact from day one, not have to wait till year seven or year five to then find some money to run it.

There are other little ways that we integrated impact through advocacy. Making sure that a huge portion of our marketing and advocacy was through pressing policy, delivering education, and making sure people had access to menstrual health education, rather than spending all our marketing budget on selling products. There are lots of ways and I think it is important to have those canvases, those tools and to think if this is my goal, how can I thread this in without necessarily putting the sustainability of this business at risk? 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you.

Daniel Teoh: Yeah, I like what Eloise has shared. If I were to add to it, I suppose, there are two things that I feel, at least in the Malaysian context. Most social enterprises are thought of like the Silicon Valley model of growth and expansion. That's how we're educated by the system, and I feel like that doesn't really work. It doesn't lead you to focusing on impact, and you end up in this strange dance where you are earning money to do the work, where the work is earning money. If that makes sense. Where everything is so contingent on profit. 

I would say that it's typically good practice to decouple impact being contingent on profit. So, instead of saying that I will share 20% of my profit on this cause, maybe bake it into a revenue share. So that it doesn't become contingent on that metric. 

The other is that, where possible, although it does work in certain contexts, I would avoid cross-subsidisation models, like buy one, give one. Because then it also brings you back to that same starting point. 

When I first started, a lot of it was revenue. I realised that, the same conclusion that Eloise came to, which is that if I do a profit percentage, it will be years before I start doing the thing that I want to do. So we shifted to a revenue share model. I think because again with that whole Silicon Valley idea. There was a lot of pride in the social enterprise sector about how you earned everything right? You are a business. As though that makes you legitimate. What I found is by splintering off to have a non-profit arm as well as Native Allies, for example, versus Native. It freed us from a lot of the drawbacks of needing to necessarily run strictly like a business. We were able to, if you think about it from a business perspective, I don't know what the legal landscape is like in Australia, but it creates a separate revenue stream for people who purely want to invest in impact. 

Then we can have our business as usual so we can sustain our core activities through the business. But for everything else that is pure impact, we have a separate revenue stream. And I think for me, being able to do that was more personal. Overcoming the idea that I had to earn everything, and in a way, I earn everything right. I still write the grant reports and blah, blah, blah. But it's also a form of diversification and it allows you to focus. So I find the hybrid model works well in that way. Integrating everything early on - it shouldn't be seen as separate.

Lara Stephenson: Thank you. That's a really great example. In Australia, it might be similar in Malaysia, there's that tax-deductible status on the non-profit. 

Ishara, was there anything you wanted to add to that?

Ishara Sahama: To add to Eloise and Daniel's comments and reflections, there's a few things that come to mind. I want to reference a previous webinar that was done with Our Race - the recording is available on Understorey. They talked about ethical storytelling. There's a connection here. Echo Impact Group have done a collaborative project with Our Race that deals with how do you delve into systems impact measurement and evaluation and ethical storytelling and make sure that your mission and the impact of your enterprise or organisation holds true throughout? Whilst making sure that everything else is balanced, such as your finances and where you get your funding from. 

Most things are commercial entities, even non-profits; they have to make a profit somehow to be a non-profit. So, where do we get the money from? Who do we get it from? Who's aligned with us? What are our values? What are their values? What is the quid pro quo around it? What do I need to do to receive the money? What do they want in return? 

To Daniel's point about this Silicon Valley modelling and how businesses are typically encouraged to be set up. I'm finding, particularly in Australia, we need to apply for grants and funding in a way that makes us sustainable financially, commercially. But then there are certain requirements around reporting and communications from funders which can help shape the way that impact is perceived and valued from social enterprises. This is not coming from a negative lens, but what ends up happening over time, and we've experienced this; we've been approached by various different social enterprise founders, who have come to us and said look, I really want to change the way in which we tell the story of our impact. We’re telling it in a way that uses certain tools such as Social Return on Investment and finance-based modelling. This is great, and it's introduced us to a number of different funders and a number of different funding pools, but it's not the story and it's not the purpose of why we exist. We didn't create this business to make profits just for the sake of profits. We created it to solve a social issue or a social challenge and that was why we started the business. 

They're getting to this crossroad of, how do we ensure that the story is being held true and is at the forefront of the conversations that we have with funders, without compromising that relationship of building capital together or building some investment relationship? This is less on social enterprises and more in the funding space as funders. 

If there's any funders and anyone in that space listening in this call, it's also an invitation. What relationship do you want to have with businesses such as social enterprises with the money that you're investing in? What does investment actually look like? Is it getting money in return or is it getting a particular type of change that you're facilitating through the injection of capital? That's inviting a different way of funding and funding streams, which social enterprises are very well set up to help with that transition.

It's something that I've been observing. There are different founders and people across the social enterprise space who know this tension and understand it deeply, but don't have the time and the resources to advocate for that whilst they're running their own business. This is where funders, if I'm being controversial, I do apologise, but this is where we bring in concepts of how do you actually, especially in the context of Australia, how do we decolonise? How do we make sure that we're having equal terms with funding businesses and causes that are doing social good, that are improving society and not doing business as usual. 

The funding landscape and the relationships built there have to change in a way to reciprocate that. that's a long response, but it's something I observe a lot because of the work that we do, couples social enterprises on one side but also deals with strategy and governance. Typically we're dealing with executives and people who deal with the money talk, so that's always a balance or imbalance that has to be addressed. Sometimes these difficult conversations need to happen, because social enterprises can't run on goodwill, they need capital. They're just like any other business.

At the same time, funding processes, grant processes might be very exhausting. It's the same across the non-profit space as well. The process is exhaustive. What becomes more sustainable as a whole for the ecosystem is addressing what relationship you have with funders, and how the impact story is told to include them as equal actors in that.

Lara Stephenson: Wow. Thank you Ishara. 

We were given a couple of questions that were asked before the session. And what I'm seeing as a good bridge is something about storytelling. We've all alluded to telling our story of impact and also having a way of doing inclusive storytelling, particularly around place-based interventions or place-based community social enterprises. Storytelling is a tool that helps connect different stakeholders in our ecosystem. It’s often a tool that we need to use in a grant, whether or not it asks for our story. 

If we've got a story that is really strong, cohesive and talks about who we are and our purpose for doing this, but also links into some of that outcome data so that we can both tell the story and prove it. Show the story in action. This is a powerful tool.

Ishara, if you don't mind, would you be able to chat to us a bit about how you've seen storytelling used well? Or examples of where you feel like storytelling has been very effective. Or ways people might be able to use storytelling. 

Ishara Sahama: I will mention Our Race again, which does work around ethical storytelling. Enterprises like Digital Storytellers that provide the tools and the framings for social enterprises to understand theory of change and what they need for storytelling.

There is a range of different Indigenous social enterprises and Indigenous owned and run consultancies that are very good at this because storytelling is part of their core being. They know how to storytell what they need to storytell for their social enterprises or for the people that they work with. 

I encourage anyone to look not only at the ones I’ve mentioned but also Indigenous owned and operated enterprises, because storytelling is core to their model of work. They always do it in a way that's reciprocal to the community and stakeholders and everyone else that they work with. It's also encouraging a different way of forming relationships in social enterprises. How does a social enterprise or organisation exist? And how do others play an influencing role in it? Whether it's funders, community, customers, external stakeholders etc.

This aspect of relationality in storytelling is important. From an organisational perspective, I think this is where impact evaluation and measurement become important, but depending on where it comes from, sometimes it does get pigeonholed into annual reports and impact reports, as mentioned. Which is one form of communication. 

I think storytelling done well is done through various mediums. Whether it's reporting, videos, documentaries, or certain social media campaigns etc. Having a diversified form of how you communicate your impact. As a practitioner in the evaluation space, and also someone who runs, co-runs my own enterprise. I'm also grappling with the challenges of running something that could be later viewed as a social enterprise, but also serving social enterprises. It's one of those things, how do I storytell the work that I do to social enterprises without making them feel overburdened? They already have enough on their plate. Everyone's at capacity, everyone's under-resourced, especially at this time in general. 

Storytelling is a really powerful way to connect people externally. Evaluation, impact evaluation or systems impact evaluation, however it turns up, is a really good way for people who are or aren't supporters of that enterprise to understand the full story.

This is where I reference Our Race because they talk about ethical storytelling. On the back of that, it also means that how evaluation, impact measurement is done, then has to change to address what ethics means. And what does ethical storytelling actually mean in an organisation? Particularly when you're dealing with lived experience or lived expertise.

How are the stories of people being communicated across different mediums, if they are? Even if it's internal. And what does that show of that enterprise? So this is where evaluators and practitioners also have to have a critical lens on storytelling. That's some of my thoughts around storytelling. 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you. That's a great answer. It's wonderful to hear the depth, because of the range of people you work with and all of the different considerations. Yes, it will take hours to go into each of them, but at least it's a good overview of all the things to consider.

Daniel or Eloise, are there any tips or ways that you would recommend people start looking at stories? Or ways that you found that your story has really come together well or landed well with your audiences or stakeholders? 

Daniel Teoh: Yeah, there are two things to share on that. One is that, when it comes to telling a story, at least in the context of working with Indigenous communities in Malaysia. The main issue that always surfaces and how social enterprises share the issue is: ‘we are trying to solve the poverty issue amongst Indigenous communities’. In Malaysia more than 70% of Indigenous communities live below the poverty line. Although I find that to be true from a lived reality perspective, I don't necessarily think it does  good in the long term because it is a disempowering narrative. 

I found a good way to think about it when you frame a story is: how would the person that you are supporting feel if they heard your problem statement or your impact story? At Native, one of our core offerings is essentially co-creation workshops for schools when they go to communities. Part of that is that they have to think of a problem statement. Right? What I found is that all students start with the same poverty problem statement, where 70% of the Orang Asli live below the poverty line. That's the issue, right? But what we find is that the story always changes once they've met the Orang Asli person. Not because they necessarily got a deeper understanding, but because it feels bad to tell someone to their face that I think your issue is that you are poor. If you think of it from that perspective, then that story is a bad one. So I found applying that framework in my mind helps me tell better stories. 

The second one is that everyone that you want to involve should have a role in your story. When we first started it was a simple narrative: come and experience the Indigenous communities of Malaysia. You support them, and you also get enriched. It lets us then evolve when we think about, okay, come and be an ally to the Orang Asli people, because when they do well, you will do well as a country as a whole. We find that by assigning a role to everyone to play, it lets us mobilise a lot more stakeholders. 

For example, it went from people buying because they think we are good guys, to institutions like universities, which would sign MOUs with us committing to Indigenous allyship. How does that look? That looks like, when I do a research paper, I want to make sure that the Orang Asli are not treated as research subjects. Where possible, I will position them as co-researchers. It's good for the Indigenous communities and it's also good for us as a business because researchers pay us to facilitate all this. So if everyone has a role, everyone has a win. By crafting stories in that way, typically it's more effective. 

Lara Stephenson: I love that. What a beautiful example. Thanks for sharing. 

Eloise Hall:  That's gorgeous, Daniel. Thank you. 

I don't really have a specific comment around TABOO, but I think one thing in a broader social change context, has really been on my mind and heart for a few years is this concept of connection. How a lot of the social issues I think we experience is this lack of connection. Daniel, your business is such a beautiful example of that. When we actually spend time with people and understand people as humans and their experience, there is this beautiful, honest, and simple understanding of what needs to happen from there.

Maybe I'm naive, too young and haven't lived enough life, but I think people are good, innately. I really want to cling to the fact that we all started as these innocent, screaming, naked babies. We're all human and we all have this shared yearning for peace and a humanity that feels safe and prosperous for us all.

When it comes to storytelling, that's where this focus should be. I think we sometimes fall into getting really complicated about it. The most effective storytelling that I've experienced is through sharing of story where humanity is at the core. It's not about the design of how that story is shared. I always come back to art, music and film, that's such a powerful place for us to meet together because they're often such human stories where we find that shared connection.

I think that's why people are drawn to social enterprise as well, because we've led with humanity and we've led with the why. If we end up getting complicated and confused about the story we want to share, we need to come back to why did this social enterprise start to begin with? Where's the human pull that made us give away secure jobs and dive into this world of solution-making? Why did we end up there? What's the human pull there? And where do we share that evidence in that way?

Lara Stephenson: Thanks, Eloise. That's such a good point. We don't often get reminded in all of the tools and frameworks that emotional connection is what changes people's minds about things or allows people to buy into something, understand something and have empathy that they didn't have prior.

Rather than pure numbers, data and all of that stuff that we also want to collect, the storytelling, that emotional connection and that human-to-human connection, whether or not you have crafted that story for hours or you just say something in a conversation to somebody, I would agree that it was part of our impact storytelling as well. A beautiful way of reminding us that the human-to-human and emotional connections is valid. We don't have to write them off just because they're not in a spreadsheet. They are really valid ways of creating change.

Perhaps a short question. When you've started collecting your impact data and you've got information about the good and positive changes, hopefully they're all good and positive, but all the changes that you've made in the communities. Maybe there's some unexpected changes or some ones that might be less good, and how do we mitigate that? How do you use that data to improve your programme or service, or plan your business strategy and evolve over time? Are there any examples where you've used data you've collected and put it into your business so that you can improve those statistics?

Eloise Hall: One of the really practical things that we've started implementing, in a systems context, is frequent check-ins. It's such an easy thing to forget to do. At least it was for us, all of a sudden, six months have passed and you haven't really sat down to evaluate how you're going. So, that's what we've started to do, putting it in our calendar, these check-in points to do that evaluation. For that to be effective, it's simple and a soft skill, but you have to have an open mind to change. I think it's important to voice because we get stuck on this idea of this will work, this will work. Actually it's way more effective to have an open mind and be ready to go, we’ve got to change this. Put the excitement aside and dive into solutions. 

It's a practical and maybe simple thing, but I've seen, and I was there too, but a lot of social enterprises, I understand, hold on a bit too tight to the how. We can be open to being influenced by the data. Data doesn't lie in a lot of ways. Taking it honestly and being able to look at it head-on. It's a pretty important thing to do.

Lara Stephenson: For sure. Thank you. 

Ishara Sahama: I wanted to add on to Eloise's comment, which is actually what I was going to mention, consistent check-ins. I realised, working with my business partner, we actually haven't done that. So that's a bit of a rap on the wrist for that. We need to, which is ironic because I do evaluations as my day job. 

I didn't mention this before, but part of the work that we do is reshaping how evaluation is perceived. It goes beyond outcomes measurement, and it's about accounting for the systems change. What's actually happening in your system? Whether it's the business as a whole or the business and how it exists with other people and funders. As Eloise mentioned, what is it actually showing you? It's basically your accountability piece. What is it telling you about what's working? What's not working? And where can you go from there? 

This becomes particularly relevant when you're talking about funded programs or services in social enterprises. I will reiterate a point I made before, typically what does end up happening is that reporting is done up to outcomes measurement only. It's sometimes very positively oriented, which is amazing, but funders should also know what went wrong. So that not only can they improve how they support social enterprises, maybe they need to put more funding aside for certain issues or challenges. Equally what do social enterprises need to do to improve what's happening behind the scenes for them?

It's having consistent check-ins but also making sure that the process by which you're evaluating and measuring is also reflecting continuous improvement and continuous feedback loops. And that it's resonant with what is happening internally as well. Are your staff or the people who are supporting these programs and services as part of the social enterprise saying the same thing? Or is it an anomaly?

With the work that we do at Echo, it's a lot of what accountability processes are there? It all goes back to storytelling, right? What stories are being told internally versus externally? How do you marry the two? And how do people who are part of that, whether they're funders, consumers, customers or whoever they may be, what role do they play in shaping that story?

Lara Stephenson: Thanks Ishara. Daniel, did you have anything to add? In this question about how you could see impact data being used strategically to improve programs or for funding applications or things like that?

Daniel Teoh: No, I don't think I have anything in particular to add. I think at the end it's also about willingness to adapt, right? Based on what you see. I've been doing this for a few years now and honestly I have also done pretty bad things by accident.

For example when we first started working with communities we indirectly did things like support elite capture. It was convenient to work with one individual, and eventually that individual ended up amassing most of the assets within the community because we supported him to do so. Without necessarily thinking that would happen. If you look at the pure data alone, because we used income as a metric but we didn't really look too much at where all that was going. 

Another framing I learned recently is that there's cold data and there is warm data.

Cold data is all the numbers and stuff. Warm data is actually lived experiences, and stories. I think at the end it's true, it's as simple as frequent check-ins. That's where the magic happens. As our operation grew more complex and we spread ourselves across more communities, it became really difficult to keep up, and have a real pulse on all these things.

At the end when you hear this happens, one part of you is thinking but things are working out for us at least, but I think you really have to look yourself hard in the mirror and decide what's important to you and be willing to reset when you need to.

Lara Stephenson: Absolutely. Thank you for that honest sharing. I can see there's a question in the chat: One of the biggest challenges we face as a social enterprise is measuring the impact of a product — especially when it leaves our hands and is used independently by families, educators, or facilitators. Unlike services, where outcomes are easier to track, it’s difficult (but not impossible) to capture both positive impact and constructive feedback because people are busy. Our products are imagination-based connection games designed to create social outcomes. What are some meaningful and practical ways to measure their impact once they’re in use? Could incentives work, or are there ethical considerations to keep in mind. 

I'm going to generalise in response to it. I think it's something that we all face, where we're creating a product or a service, in this case, a product. That product is going out and hopefully changing people's lives for the better. How do we know that [change] is happening? Because those people might not tell us and we might not know who they are because it was sold through an intermediary, like a shop. 

I've experienced that too, in a way where I knew the person I was creating the change for, but the change I wanted to create for them was to do with their financial situation. That wasn't something I could follow them up on and ask them about. So we're looking at how I know impact is happening when you can't directly see it?

When it's going out, although you could definitely allow people to scan a QR code on your product, no matter what it is, and tell you feedback and say how it's improved their lives. If they never do that. You've got to look at that situation of, what proxy or what indicator can we look at that tells us that our desired outcome is still happening?

For example, women running a business, having more financial independence. A proxy for that could be, are they still running their business? Is their business their sole source of income? Have they been able to transition from full-time work into part-time work plus their business? There's many different indicators that might point towards that change that you're hoping to find out.

Something else I might suggest doing for a game. We'll try and generalise this a bit but you could do play testing or focus groups with different types of people that you want to help. Gather the kinds of changes that they experienced from it. Try and ask them what the most significant change was. Through gathering this in controlled situations where you're present and knowing what kinds of changes they did experience, you may be able to marry that up with your logic model and the changes you want to make and see. Does it match? Then have a look at, if I can't measure that, what can I measure? What's in my control to measure? It might not be that you can measure the thing that you thought you wanted to measure. It's hard to talk about generally, but hopefully that gives some ideas.

Eloise Hall: I might chime in quickly. I can empathise with wanting to find information that's not easily measured. 

For example, we have programmes with free access to period products. We know that when you can't access period products you're less likely to go to school and work, and your financial security is more strained. So there are these outcomes that we know will come for people from access to period products.

One trial we did with the city council, where people were able to access product for free. In the context of the consumer, you go to the bathroom and you're able to access a free pad. From a consumer perspective, you might not necessarily understand the positive impact that will have in the categories that we understand. For this trial we had a QR code on the poster where people were able to give us feedback, and we got some great data because we asked specific questions about the outcomes that we predicted. 

Perhaps there's a note there, if you expect that XYZ is going to come from using this game, be quite direct with those questions. 

For example, we said, did this access to the product ease the financial constraints of your week? Were you better supported to go to school that week? We had really specific questions and of course people responded with I don't go to school, that's not true for me. But there was another question about, were you able to go to work? And would you have otherwise not been able to? So they're really specific things that perhaps they didn't understand the impact of that product. Being a little bit outright in the data you want to collect might be helpful putting those indicators in place.

In terms of the engagement, people wanted to engage with that survey because it was a trial. I think they had this idea that if I give feedback then it may or may not continue. There was this prospect of future continuation that maybe was a helpful reason to get them to contribute. That's the one experience that might be valuable to share. 

Lara Stephenson: That's a great example, thank you for sharing. Yes, Ishara. 

Ishara Sahama: To add to Eloise's point, being direct is really useful. It's also about what time constraints you have? What do you need for conversation with different stakeholders, as well as to communicate what impact this service or product is having?

In the context of that comment that was put in the chat and this might be the case for other enterprises as well, that have products or services. 

One thing that I noticed is that there's an intermediary. There are families, educators and facilitators that help disseminate the product or the service, in this case, it's a product. Depending on context and sensitivities, sometimes it's good to decentralise how you gather that data. If there are certain customers whose first point of call and trust is with an educator or a facilitator, and not an executive or the owner of the social enterprise.

Perhaps it's better to get data and feedback from that person the customer has trust with. Then there's some agreement or working relationship to gather the data back to the social enterprise and have ongoing discussions, share constructive feedback in a way that doesn't put burden on staff or anyone in the social enterprise where there might not be resourcing for it. 

Two, it also means that different customers and people in different regions who are using that product also know who's their point of call to give feedback, and is a familiar face or familiar group of people. This is what you mentioned, Lara, about what's in your control as a social enterprise? Particularly in the context of what your product or service is. What's a good way to design how you get feedback and how you evaluate that? Also get to know as a social enterprise what are the moving parts? What things are growing organically? What changes are happening organically? That you can't see because you're not in that day-to-day, with that particular group of people, or in that particular demographic.

That's really good for a social enterprise or business owners to understand the impact that goes beyond what they can see or what they might have predicted. It's a really great question. 

Lara Stephenson: Thank you.

There were questions about tools, processes and frameworks. We've contributed to a list of various tools, templates, frameworks, processes, that we think helped us on our journey. Obviously you won't need to do them all but have a look. 

I know we're almost at time so I'm going to say thank you so much to all of our beautiful speakers here and all of your wisdom and experiences through this session.

Sherryl Reddy: Thanks everyone. Thanks so much Lara, Ishara, Daniel, and Eloise. Wow, your honesty and generosity in sharing so many of your stories and experiences. I was taking notes on all the takeaways and a few takeaways that really landed with me, though I've got pages. 

One of them was impact is a synonym for change. What change are you accounting for? What are you facilitating? What are you enabling? I loved Daniel's reflection on looking at passive and active ways of measuring impact and making sure it's integrated through all your business decisions. The need to listen deeply and be willing to adapt based on what you learn through your impact measurement journey. The importance of growth and connection in the workplace internally. I love that reference Eloise, to communicating impact to your internal staff, especially for staff that are in back-of-house roles and how important that is.

One of you shared that there's no need to get complicated. Share stories where humanity is at the core, and look for the shared human pull. Ishara, I loved what you shared around the critical need to decolonise and reimagine funding and consider mutual partnership approaches that actually support and enable business and impact. As you said, we can only be around to make impact if we have a sustainable business. 

Huge thanks to all of you for your time, your expertise, your absolute generosity. Mountains of gratitude for the gold that you've shared with us today. 

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to join us online today.

I'd also like to thank the Australian Department of Social Services, who are supporting the development of these learning communities, as part of the Australian Social Enterprise Development Initiative. 

Thank you too to the Social Enterprise Australia crew behind the scenes that make these communities happen.

I invite everyone to check out Understorey for upcoming open learning webinars. We look forward to seeing you all at our next session. Thanks everyone.