Transcript: Value of Good Impact Measurement

Music: Measure - Field Music

Athanasia Price: Hello. Thank you for joining today's open learning session. We know the topic of impact measurement is an important and a popular one.

My name is Athanasia Price from Social Enterprise Australia, and these open learning sessions are part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. Our aim with these open learning sessions is to create a space for multiple change makers and supporters right across the social enterprise sector to share their knowledge and their experiences, that will help strengthen connection and collaboration right across the sector.

Today's session is convened by Andrew Reilly from Sustainable Value in collaboration with this wonderful group of social enterprise leaders we have today: Melissa Rayner, Eddie Blass, Nader Ibrahim and Rachael Nielsen, all of whom participated in this peer learning community over the past 12 months, sharing challenges, learnings and ideas for practising good impact measurement as part of doing business.

So thank you to all of you for practising and being willing to share your experience, and for your generosity and care in sharing the time with everybody.

Now before I hand over to Andrew, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands that we are all joining from. I am thankful to be on beautiful Quandamooka Country and I pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging. I recognise their continuing connection to the waters, to the skies, to the lands that we all have the privilege of working on. If you would like to share the country that you're on, please do so in the chat.

I also pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants joining today and I acknowledge and recognise that your presence here holds over 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people, place and planet. So thank you.

A few things to note about today's session: this is being recorded and the recording will be made available on Understorey in the coming weeks for people who weren't able to attend and can continue to learn from your learnings here. We welcome your comments and reflections and suggestions in the open chat function and we definitely love your emoji reactions throughout the conversation when things resonate with you.

So now it's a great pleasure to hand over to Andrew to kick off this conversation.

Andrew Reilly: Thanks, Athanasia, and for your lovely welcoming introduction for the panel today. That's wonderful.

We have on the panel a group of very impressive practitioners working hard across various areas of the social enterprise space in South Australia. So I think we're looking forward to an entertaining conversation.

Perhaps for some context: last year on the panel, Eddie and Rachael participated in a year-long online workshop series which I led. This was called Good Impact and their journey was learning and putting into practice social impact measurement and approaches that suited their specific organisations. So we'll be talking about that.

Also last year, Nader's organisation received SEDI funding to further develop his social enterprise, and that's enabled a full scale social impact measurement framework to be created, built on social impact work that we had been doing together over about three years. So we've got a bit of a blend of experience here, some more recent work and some work that's been happening over a period of time.

And very importantly, Mel, who's also part of the panel, leads the peak social enterprise collective here in South Australia. And so we partnered together on this Good Impact work to encourage social enterprises to think about how they can measure and talk about impact and get involved in the doing of it.

I'm going to be asking the panellists as we go through to talk about topics and place their organisations in context. So rather than a lengthy boring bio introduction from everyone, I think what we'll encourage them to do is talk about their organisations as they talk about their experiences.

So what we're going to do is move into the first topic, which is about motivation. It's quite a big thing to think about: how are we going to measure the impacts from our social enterprise? So what I'll do firstly is turn to you, Eddie, and ask this why question. Would you be able to reflect for us on what were some of your primary motivations in wanting to begin to design and measure the impact that your organisation is having?

Eddie Blass: Okay, thanks, Andrew.

So I signed up for the workshop initially because I was looking for funding to open a school, which we now, after two and a half years, have got permission to open. But that actually wasn't the real motivation behind social impact.

So Inventorium is a primarily online education offering for kids who are not suited to mainstream schools. We teach kids who are school-refusal kids, who for health reasons can't attend school, anxiety, depression, for a variety of reasons. The students really come to us almost as a last resort, in that there's nowhere left for them to go for schooling until that point.

And we have always, up till now, contracted through other schools. So other schools pay us to teach their students, so effectively our biggest competitor is our customer. Our clients are our competitor. So as a business model, it is not a good model. We really had to show how we're achieving something in a different way, to funding bodies, to schools, to society, to the government, in order for everyone to tolerate what we do in the market.

And the whole issue started when I read that between 20% - 40% of South Australians drop out of school between years 8 and 12. And I just thought, that is dire for the state, just dire in terms of our future. But in terms of a social impact measure, trying to link what we do to that 20-40% is such a huge leap. It's like having started with a social impact outcome in mind. How do I then measure things and prove some sort of social impact that isn't possible when I can't claim against that initial 20 - 40%? Maybe 0.01%, but I just couldn't link the two.

So I went on the journey of Andrew's course in particular to try and discover different ways that I could measure social impact better to make a better business case for what we do.

Andrew Reilly: Lovely. So there's quite a bit in that, really quite a few inter-threaded motivations that run from funding through to just being able to talk to our stakeholders better about what it is you're doing, through to even how we're going to improve our model as we go forward.

Maybe I could then turn to Rachael and ask whether the motivations for you were similar, different, something else. How would you reflect on that?

Rachael Nielsen: Similar, really. I mean, it was definitely in a quest for increasing our funding, certainly in various areas across the organisation. Because I head up the social enterprise, The Plug-in. We are a social and market research agency and we focus on delivering research that is looking at issues, things that are good or things that are bad, for people aged over 50. So there's a lot of topics that we cover in terms of the research that we do. And we work on a social enterprise model because whatever we make from our fee for service offering goes directly back into the not-for-profit COTA SA, or Council on the Ageing.

And we were wanting to measure social impact for COTA SA as organisation-wide, but we also wanted to measure it for our social enterprise, The Plug-in. So measuring it for COTA SA wide is a massive undertaking because we wanted to measure the social impact across all of our programmes and all of the different services that we offer, which was vast, it was a lot of work.

But for the social enterprise ourselves, at The Plug-in, it was really to be able to generate more clients, to say: this is what we're offering for clients, this is the impact we're having. But it was also to attract more older people to join our community, to say: this is what our community offers, being part of this community has these benefits and this impact.

So it started off being quite broad, what we wanted to achieve. But at our social impact level of The Plug-in, it was yes, to attract new funding and to attract people to come in.

Andrew Reilly: That's interesting because it's also, as you're just explaining, about business development, being able to develop the commercial component of your social enterprise. You'd consider that to be a really commercial thing. But then on the other hand you're also talking about being able to attract volunteers to be involved in what the organisation does, and that's a very philanthropic thing. Two very different motivations in there alongside, as you say, putting something in place for the whole organisation to prove its value as well.

Nader, can I ask you something different again, or more of the same? What would you say?

Nader Ibrahim: I would like to stay on the same line because this is what I love about this conversation.

Listening to Eddie and listening to Rachael, it just takes me back in time. Motivation was something that we already had from day one, building the business model of what our organisation does and delivers and aims to do. And we had no particular intention or understanding or framework around it. We just were happy with what we were doing, and we were happy with how we were doing it. We knew that there were a lot of benefits coming with it and we were just happy to see that, until I met with Andrew years ago and he said: what you guys are doing is the absolute definition of social enterprise. I was like, what does that mean?

So you were kind of doing a lot of impact and a lot of social enterprise work without knowing the technical term for it. That's like somebody coming back to you and saying: hey, this is not just awesome, this is absolutely amazing. You just need to polish your understanding and start utilising the right channels. For us, that was more motivation to validate our business model, our challenge. Because when you start something, and a lot of us could relate here working in social enterprise or being part of social enterprise, nine times out of ten it's not an ordinary business model. It's always something out of the ordinary.

And then the SEDI grant came. The first thing we did was, yes, we want to apply, because we really need to have a proper framework. This is not something that I understand very well, this is not something that I studied very well, but this is something that I'm willing to learn and willing to apply because we know that we have all of the means for it.

So the motivation kind of came to us and pushed us forward, and then it was: let's keep going with it because we see the benefits, we see a lot coming our way. Last year and the recent engagement, coming up at the end of the year in December with a proper framework, I'm so excited to start this 2026 and start applying all of the learnings and all of the things that we've done.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I like how it's such a natural motivation. You didn't have to create motivation to want to do that. It was naturally there in the essence of your business, working with young people, working with migrants, working with young people with disability. You knew you were doing good work. It was just a matter of bringing it together, making it happen and being able to communicate about it.

Mel, perhaps if I can jump over to you. Is that a similar story? If you look across the range of social enterprises in South Australia, do you feel that there are similar motivations in there? Are there any others?

Melissa Rayner: Yeah, absolutely. I think we quite often come across social enterprises very similar to Nader. They have the passion, they have the motivation but they're not quite sure how to communicate the impact that they're creating. And so what SASEC, or the South Australian Social Enterprise Council, does is we represent the interests of social enterprises and we support them in growing and flourishing, connecting them to the facilitators that can assist in building out those impact delivery models and frameworks.

We don't necessarily do the delivery of programmes but we can find those programmes, find those grant opportunities and connect them to those places.

So I come at it from two different perspectives. One is as a social enterprise founder in the past, and then as someone who's supporting them. So there's a lot of things that I identified in my business, which launched back in 2017. It was a cafe and catering business that supported employment opportunities and work placement for young people with barriers to employment. And I struggled with how to tell my impact, how to overcome some of those challenges where people think a social enterprise is maybe an inferior service or product because you're working with people who are in training. So you really have to be able to communicate your story and why you're doing what you're doing and get the buy-in of those people that are actually purchasing from you. And to do that you need to have a really clear idea of what story you're telling, the impact that you're creating. And that's when people come along for the ride and the journey and really start to build that community around you.

So measurement and communicating that impact is so integral to your business success.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, I love that because the idea that social impact helps with engaging better with your customers, stakeholders, funders, government, it's all about how can we engage more deeply, better, have people understand us better. And I think people can sometimes think: oh, social impact and measurement, has that got to do with numbers? And yes, it does have a little bit to do with numbers and occasionally it can be a bit complicated, but at its essence it's about engagement. It's about wanting to tell the story better.

So, coupled with motivations, you have this great desire and you've got a great business that's running, and then you jump into doing it and you find out that it really is not easy. Challenges is the next topic that I'd like to pick up on. There's lots of preparation involved in figuring out what it is that you want to measure, how you're going to measure it, making sure that whatever you do, you can then communicate well.

To ask about challenges, perhaps if I could turn to Rachael to begin with. Can you tell us about some of the perhaps immediate and even ongoing challenges that you have, just trying to get to the first base of: what do we measure and how do we measure it?

Rachael Nielsen: Yes, there definitely were challenges. I think the start was the hardest part because it felt like we were having to climb a mountain and how on earth were we going to do that?

But me and my immediate team, we are researchers, so collecting data, analysing data, communicating data, this is our bread and butter. However, evaluation as a methodology is a different ball game entirely. And I think getting started was our hardest part because there's a lot of preparation that has to go into beginning your evaluation journey, so that it is going to be the most effective impact plan that you can have.

We kind of decided that, you know, even though we didn't quite have all our ducks in a row, we just had to get started and dive in to see what data we were able to collect and see what the data was looking like and go head first, rather than feeling like everything had to be planned out entirely.

Another challenge has certainly been team buy-in across the organisation. This was massive because essentially we're asking our people, our colleagues, to do more work. We're adding work onto their plate. People see the benefit certainly, but you only really see the benefit after you have gathered the data, communicated your data, and you've gained the funding, or you've attracted new volunteers. So until you actually get to that endpoint, that can be hard for people to see the value.

So we've done team training sessions, we've developed a social impact guide framework and guidebook that people can use so they can understand what we're doing. We're constantly bringing it up in staff meetings. Getting that team buy-in has been quite a journey.

Also getting our heads around the fact that this evaluation is ongoing. The evaluation isn't just something that you do once and then you've got the data and you put that on the shelf and you're done. It's this ongoing thing that you have to keep collecting data for and keep working at. So that is tricky because you're trying to prioritise this work alongside the immediate work that you're doing to help older people, a lot of them who are quite vulnerable. So finding out how to prioritise evaluation alongside that is also a challenge, for sure.

Andrew Reilly: There are some great and I think common challenges in there. I like how you were talking about this idea that you almost need to build belief. It's sort of about a bit of a cultural change, would you say, Rachael?

Rachael Nielsen: Yes, certainly. Because previously we were measuring satisfaction. We had satisfaction surveys and we would mainly use those insights and that data to improve our programmes. And that's all well and good, but it's this real shift to say: no, we are now measuring impact. So it's about taking people along in that journey. And I think it's been very helpful that I really believe in social impact measurement as an incredible tool to articulate the impact that you're having. So I've really championed this in the organisation. It can be very helpful to have somebody who is a firm believer in impact evaluation to really guide it through the organisation and take people on the journey.

Andrew Reilly: I don't want to continue the religious theme, but I think you do need a zealot. Someone who looks as though they have unshakable belief in this working, and then they sort of lead and others can follow in behind.

What would you say about that, Nader? Are you the person with unshakable belief?

Nader Ibrahim: I'm the priest when it comes to this. I try my best day in, day out. First and foremost is to remind myself that we really have to keep impact measurement at the forefront of what we do every day. Because usually you work to: what is it you want? What are the KPIs? 1, 2, 3. These are done. Thank you very much, see you next week. Don't come and offload extra things on top of me. Customer satisfaction and this, that, the other. Like, no, I'm not interested. I'm here to do 1, 2, 3. And unfortunately, this is what the mainstream norm just is.

On the other hand, the word "survey" is being overused and often misused as well. Hey, just stay on the line and fill in that quick survey for two minutes for your chance to win a dream holiday. Once you start hearing things like that, the word itself has been misused. So when somebody is coming in to convince themselves, convince the team they work with, let alone convincing the participants or clients or customers or stakeholders, to actually engage in a meaningful way. Because at the end of the day if you just hand out a survey and people go yes, no, yes, no, no, no, boom, submit, you shouldn't have bothered.

So to explain to people: this is, for me, more than the challenge. Are we doing it for the sake of doing it or are we doing it because we believe it needs to be done? And here are the positive impacts coming from it. Yes, we are measuring positive impact through it. But how much of a positive impact will this measuring of positive impact have back on us as individuals and as an organisation?

On top of all of this, you have to allow time, you have to dedicate time. Often as a social enterprise lead, you're not going to do that at 11 o'clock in the morning. You're going to do that between 7 and 11pm, after the kids go to sleep. So this is another challenge for me.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, it is. And I think the organisations that have been quite successful at doing this have solved that part of using it to show themselves what their impact is. So whilst they're communicating externally to all of these stakeholders, funders, government, advocating for themselves, all of those things which are important, if they also convince themselves by talking to each other and saying: oh, that programme's working really well, look at the results. Why aren't we getting the same in this other programme over here? When we sell that service, people love it, but for some reason this one, which we think is just as good, doesn't work. It's that using it internally to help out. The organisations who get that bit, who get how to use it internally, then they're able to keep that motivation going to keep doing it over time.

Perhaps I could turn to Eddie or Mel. Thoughts on challenges? Eddie, would you like to share a couple?

Eddie Blass: Oh, sure.

So as a recovering academic, I share Rachael's issues around the actual measurement process and how do you measure what you are. And I still worry that there is a break in the chain of causation from what I'm measuring and what we're doing. I have no idea if I can claim some of the things that I would like to claim in terms of social impact or not. Because the students are with us for a long time, like two or three years, and an awful lot happens in their life in two or three years that is completely outside of what we do. So the direct impact of that, I still struggle and worry about what we claim.

The one measure we take as our North Star is whether or not the kids achieve what they set out to achieve when they join us. So we ask them what their aim is - whether it's to get into university, whether it's to go and do a VET course or get a job. And 95% of our kids achieve that, but we don't set what that is, they do. So it might not necessarily be the right government measure of success, or ATAR, or things like that that are standardised measurements, but for us it's about the kids having agency on their future. That's the one measurement I'm 100% happy with and quote all the time.

Every other measurement that we do I find challenging, partly because I'm not sure if what we're measuring is actually valid. Secondly, given the nature of our students, some of the questions that we would want to ask are just not appropriate to ask. So the actual data collection is difficult. And thirdly, it's actually really, really expensive to work out what you're doing, set it all up, get the measurement instruments in place, collect all the data, analyse it and present it in such a way that it can be of value. We looked at a couple of places and got proposals for someone to do that for us and you're well over $50,000. Most organisations do not have $50,000 to spare for somebody else to set up your impact framework. And that's experts doing it. So then you've got to do it yourself and you don't know what you're doing, and it's two or three times that in your own time to get a product that isn't even quite as good.

Plus the additional thing that was mentioned earlier of having multiple stakeholders, so you want to measure different things to appeal to different stakeholders. Which ones do you prioritise? And actually, at the end of the day, coming up with a financial business model is easier than a social impact one because you can show profitability or not, really easily, really simply, and everybody works on the same measure. Whereas when you go for a social impact, there is no blueprint guideline, no set way of doing it.

Sorry if that sounds really negative, but this is the hardest area of my business that I still struggle with.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, I think that's a great honest reflection because if it was easy, everyone would already be doing it. Having said that, financial analysis of an organisation is not the easiest thing to do either, but there are lots of practitioners who already know how to do it. There's also software, and there's regulation that requires you to do it, so you don't have any option. Whereas at the moment social impact measurement is more optional. But I think as time progresses it won't necessarily be mandatory, but it will be a very nice-to-have because funders and others will ask you to prove certain things. So yes, it's a really accurate reflection of where things are at the moment. Fortunately you can do it for a lot less than $50k. But the key thing is, yes, being able to spend some time towards it.

Mel, what would you say about challenges? What have you come across?

Melissa Rayner: Yeah, I mean I share a similar sentiment in terms of time and capacity. That's the biggest challenge in business in general.

And I guess if you want to tell a story you need to have the evidence to back up that story. I always look at it from a marketing perspective and a commercial perspective as well. If you're marketing your business and the impacts that you're creating, and telling a story to draw more people in and engage with them, then impact is a perfect measure to share. So the more data and measurements that you have, the more you can share, the more transparency you have. Greenwashing and social washing is a huge problem now, so you're actually differentiating yourself from other businesses that may not have the real data to back themselves up. So for me it's absolutely necessary.

And you can do it in some really simple ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be, we're all survey fatigued as Nader pointed out, box-ticking. You can do simple things. I'll give you an example from my old business. We had a young man who had been placed with us. He was incredibly shy, he couldn't look a customer in the eye. And over time we worked with our customers and him to build his confidence up and to build his skill sets up. And the measure was actually the feedback from our customers over a six-month period. They were like: wow, we've actually just seen James evolve and grow into this amazing worker. And so then we collected a testimonial about that, with his permission of course. And that becomes really valid data and evaluation, and a really powerful sharing tool. And it's exciting. The customers get behind that and we shared with them: you are part of the development of this person's trajectory, their outcomes. So thank you for participating in that.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, you're right. It goes back to that engagement component. And I'm glad you brought up the social washing part of it. It's excellent to have those anecdotal stories, they're brilliant. You need to be able to humanise whatever the social impact is that you're having. But the other component is: when you're looking to expand services, gather more funding from others, one of the first questions people will ask is: okay, well if you were doing this for five people but now you want to do it for 100, what confidence can you give me that this thing you do will work when you do it with 100 people? It's about de-risking the investment or the funding, whatever comes to support your business to go forward with scaling and expanding.

And unless you've got a bit of measurement around that, just saying it worked for one person, the immediate question is: what happened to the other four? Are the other four failures and you're just showing me the one star? Having evidence that says no, 95%, taking your example Eddie, 95% of students can be shown to have completed the goals they set for themselves. That's good proof. That's the reason why you would get more funding, be able to expand into the future.

Okay, thanks for sharing those challenges. We've sort of steered a little bit into conversation about benefits, because there are benefits internally to your organisations and also externally. Who would like to share some thoughts on, perhaps for the work that you've been doing over the last 12 months, a benefit that either you were expecting and has happened, or maybe even an unintended benefit? Nader, I'll throw to you.

Nader Ibrahim: I will start where people like to hear it: financial benefits.

I had people from the Department of Human Services sitting in my office just putting a document in front of me for signing. They're offering me funds to continue doing one of the events that we run. Just briefly, it's a tournament, it's a football tournament. We have up to 200 to 300 young players coming, boys and girls, just a one-day tournament. We have all of the support around them. SA Police, Federal Police, so many of the community organisations and stakeholders whose job is to engage with youth, but they can hardly bring the youth through their doors. I bring them out here to play. You come down to a stall and you come and meet with somebody.

They have seen how much this means to the young players that are coming. Players that play for Adelaide United Youth team got in trouble because they'd been told not to come and play in One Culture's tournament, and they defied the odds and just came and played. That's how amazing it is for the kids. We've created a little beast.

They've seen it and they said: you know what, whatever you want. Here is three years in advance, so you don't have to think about it. We want this running as long as you can. So here is an MOU for three years for this event. And also for the other one, a social football programme that we run every Friday night, Friday Night Lights. They came again and said we're happy to support that for the next three years. And I said to them: but how am I going to report on a year? They said: we wanted to fund you, we couldn't fund you, but we knew you kept going and doing the work. This is like a thank you from us. Keep going and for the next two years, kind of thing.

So this is a benefit that everybody would love to hear. Finally, a government department comes on board and appreciates what you've been doing. But this doesn't happen over a couple of months, it's been seven, eight years.

Meanwhile, six months ago I was in a Federal MP's office talking to his office assistants. And to be honest, I just put my hand on the table and I said: I'm ending this meeting, I'm leaving. There is no point talking to you. All you worry about is how many votes you can get. I work with children, they don't even vote. They don't even care about who you are or your Federal MP. I'm talking about community interest and these are the kids that you're supposed to be looking out for. It's not just about votes. And I'm not a football club. Stop calling me a football club. And I just stood up and left.

So the benefits are: once one of the government departments starts believing in you, now you can go to them and say: I want you to take me by the hand and sit me down with the Minister himself so that they can understand. Suddenly you go from having no name, no value, to something real. With the persistence and the perseverance, and going through all the challenges and using all of the motivations, now it's time to reap the benefits. I hope that comes a lot sooner for all of us than having to wait eight years.

Andrew Reilly: I know there were some other things along the way, including frustrations, so I don't want everyone to think it took seven or eight years before anything happened. What I like there is this idea of reputation lifting or reputation building, which is really helpful. Is that something you wanted to reflect on, Rachael?

Rachael Nielsen: Yes, I think that's quite right for us as well. Being able to talk to State government, who provides our peak body funding, and say that we've started developing this social impact framework and we're beginning to measure social impact, it's been incredibly credibility-building. They're seeing that we're thinking in this type of way and that's been very helpful. We haven't even released our data or our report yet, but to show that we're thinking in this way has been really helpful.

The other benefit has also been internally for our staff team. Because we're measuring impact across all of our different programmes and everybody feels very passionately about their own programme, it's been incredibly helpful for everybody to see how the work that everyone's doing in each programme is coming together to form the social impact of COTA SA as organisation-wide. That's been really encouraging. We say this as a team all the time: we know the wonderful work we're doing, but to be able to actually see it in numbers and in testimonials from the people that we're trying to help has been really encouraging for me and for the team.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah. I don't think there's anybody who doesn't like hearing that there is real value in the work that they're doing every day. And not just from your boss who's trying to motivate you to do more work, it's coming from the clients you're working with or the people who are buying your services saying: this is really valuable to me. Could there be better evidence, for you as a worker, to be hearing?

What about you, Eddie? In terms of other benefits, have there been other things that have come along for you?

Eddie Blass: So two things.

It allowed us to go for SEFA funding, which is Social Enterprise Funding Authority, for the school, and they have backed us to open the school, which we wouldn't even have been able to go for if we didn't have a theory of change and a measurement framework.

But more than that, I think the biggest benefit for me is in staff recruitment. It attracts a group of applicants who are motivated by the social impact of what we're doing rather than just wanting a job, if that makes sense. So when we first started and we weren't known, I had difficulty recruiting teachers. The applicant pool was teachers who, for whatever reason, needed really flexible working hours. Whereas now I am getting absolutely top teachers from every other school sector applying to work with us, and I get to pick and choose. That's such a huge shift in five years, from starting with 10 kids to over 300 kids now. Things are really on a trajectory. But that recruitment bit, huge.

Andrew Reilly: Fantastic. And teachers for you are at the heart of being able to deliver your impact. So the higher the quality of the teacher you can attract, that, for me, that's a sustainability measure. If you were looking internally at whether you're more sustainable because you've lifted the quality of your teaching staff, you should be able to measure in the future that 95% goes up to 99.5% or whatever the number is. To me, 95 seems good, Eddie, but 99.5 would be even better.

How about you, Mel? Looking across the sector as SASEC, are you seeing benefits that are starting to emerge for social enterprises because they're looking now more at how to measure things and talk about it?

Melissa Rayner: Yeah, absolutely. The more our businesses are measuring and sharing that impact, the more they're going to grow and flourish. So obviously we encourage that.

Social procurement is a really big topic. It can be a little bit scary for people if they haven't really heard that terminology. And starting out as a business myself, I wasn't sure what that meant. Once I sat down and really delved into what social procurement meant, and the doors that it could open, it was again vital to my business. Sharing that with social enterprises, enabling them to connect with corporations and organisations that want to invest their money in social enterprises, has been highly beneficial. So we're really focused on ensuring that our enterprises across the state can get behind social procurement opportunities and connect with those organisations.

I think the other great benefit is course-correcting. When you've got the data in front of you, you've got the evaluations, that enables you to course-correct when things maybe aren't going as you'd hoped, when you're not gaining the impact or outcomes that you were hoping for. You can actually do something about that and move your trajectory in a different direction to achieve the actions that you're seeking.

Andrew Reilly: And being able to make those decisions on the back of really good quality information rather than a gut feel or noticing that something's just dipped. But is that a permanent dip or has it been good in the past and could we get it back on track with some adjustment? Having some good quality data to support decisions, I think every business relies on that. Social impact data can help out there for sure.

I feel like we have covered quite a broad landscape there and a number of topics all fitting in around social impact measurement, how to communicate it and the benefits of it. Perhaps now is a good time to see whether the audience has some specific questions they would like to chip in. You can do that by typing them into the chat and we would very happily pick them up and answer them.

What I might do is to get that underway while people are thinking about what their question could be. Oh, I think we have one.

The question is: did I miss where the speakers mentioned how they measured and what kind of platform they built?

Perhaps if I could start with Nader, because you've been working on this a bit longer than others. Perhaps talk a little bit about the specifics of what you're using, what you're doing to measure, and whether you're using a platform for that.

Nader Ibrahim: So the platform we've been looking at is the Social Value Bank. I know there are other platforms out there. That was one that worked with us really well.

And obviously through a lot of questionnaires and surveys and different kinds of ways of looking at the impact, before and after and in between and so forth, things have come together. We had the help to support us in creating the surveys and the systems that we can take out to our participants, and then from there we use Social Value Bank as a methodology.

Andrew Reilly: Great. The Australian Social Value Bank- having used that method with a number of organisations, I can certainly endorse that there's good value to it. It's not necessarily the solution for everyone.

Perhaps, Rachael, I could jump over to you. You've more recently put this in place. Would you like to tell us a bit about how you've done that practically?

Rachael Nielsen: Yeah. So our situation is a little bit different because we are a research team. Gathering data like surveys and interviews is kind of what we do, that's how we make money. So we've added evaluation into the skill set of our team.

That has been surveys run through our online platform - we do a lot of printed surveys for people over the age of 50 who are not online, we do a lot of phone surveys as well, and that's all captured and then we analyse it through the systems that we have in house. So I can't comment on any external opportunities, that's how we're able to do it. It works quite well because we're able to integrate it into systems and workflows that we already have, which is brilliant. Not that it doesn't present different challenges, but that's how we've done it.

Andrew Reilly: I think that's a really good point about trying to integrate this work into existing ways that you're doing things, to make it easy for staff and to use tools that they're familiar with. I've certainly worked with a number of clients who are using the Microsoft platform, so we keep using the Microsoft platform, or the Google platform. There are other tools that sit outside of that and they might come up before the end of this conversation as well.

Eddie, how are you going about doing your work?

Eddie Blass: Yeah, we're not doing it very well. We mine naturally occurring data, so we have progress notes, destinations data and so on for every single student, and then we go back through all the records and pull the data, which is not an efficient way of dealing with data. So we're looking at ways of improving how we do it without it feeling like it's a survey for the students. We're actually looking at different student management systems now and different ways of collecting data for other purposes. But when we look at the other purposes, one of the things we're looking at is how we get the data out into even just a CSV file that we can then compare and do something with.

So the answer is: not well, I'm afraid.

Andrew Reilly: No, that's right. And when you're using those existing systems, being able to analyse the data is a key part. Just because you run a survey doesn't mean you've got any analysis. You've just got a bunch of data. Having some skill within your team to manipulate data, whether it's in Google or Microsoft or something else, things like pivot charts and pivot tables and the capability to analyse, that's a very useful tool these days. And if you're halfway capable in Microsoft or Google and you watch a couple of YouTube videos, that's quite doable.

But I will mention another tool that I think is quite useful: Seedkit. Seedkit is a bespoke question bank for ways to capture data and then also report on it. All of that material is available on the Social Enterprise Australia Understorey website. So I would encourage people on the call who want to explore this a bit further to have a look at Understorey, because the resources there include quite a bit of information. Seedkit in particular is a good place to start, to have a think about what questions might be suitable for you and then maybe build on it from there.

So, did we have questions from anybody else?

Rachael Nielsen: I'll also add that I think it's wise to match your measurement to what is possible within the organisation as well. There's a lot that we could have done, but we decided to keep it simple on purpose so that it wasn't onerous and it matched to the existing skill set that we had. That was quite important rather than trying to do everything. We've tried to do the most impactful social impact measurement we could, just to keep it manageable. Rather than feeling like you have to do everything, you can start small and then build capacity from there. I don't know if you agree, Andrew?

Andrew Reilly: Absolutely, I would endorse that 100%. And in fact what I would suggest to people is to do the piece of work that creates a basic framework to start with, so that you know what direction you want to head in. Then, having created a basic framework, do a pilot. Pick out an individual service or a place or a team within your organisation, or a sub-programme, something that is manageable where you're not having to deal with too many moving parts, and test it there. Work out how you're going to ask the questions. If it's a survey, if it's going to involve an interview, work out how does that happen, where does it happen, who conducts it, do they need to be trained. Put those pieces together, give the information to your team, go through the whole process end to end of collecting the data, getting it, analysing it, and then you'll iron out whatever the kinks are in what you thought the process was going to look like. Then you can begin to expand to other programmes or services, other parts of your organisation.

So I would always suggest: start small so that the mountain is just a hill instead. You can get up that hill and once you've gone over the first hill, you've got a bit of fitness. Then you can climb the second hill that might be a little bit taller.

I'm just looking here. We've got another question about storytelling. The question is: how do speakers deploy their measured data together with stories? Because as we know, that's important to include in things like annual reports and social media posts. Rachael, I'm sure you've done some of this. I know that Nader has done some of it as well. Would you two like to comment?

Rachael Nielsen: Yes. So for funding applications or grant funding, we'll use the hard data generally, because you have typically less space to convey a story in those documents.

But we are in the works of developing a social impact report which will actually replace our annual report. So we'll just be reporting on impact going forward, which is very daunting yet also very exciting. That's the end goal of everything we've been doing.

And I was just talking to our communications team before this webinar, encouraging them that anytime they're talking about any programme that we do, we have this incredibly rich data that they can weave the story into, to attract volunteers or attract people to a programme. So I've been encouraging people to use that data throughout the organisation all the time, really, rather than just waiting for the impact report.

One thing that hasn't been brought up yet: it's been quite helpful for us to do little vox pops as a way of gathering data. That's quite straightforward because it doesn't require data analysis, but it's a really amazing way of being able to portray the impact that what you've done has had on somebody's life. Because it's them actually telling you themselves through a video. That's been quite helpful for us and it can be used in social media or wherever.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, I'm a big fan of vox pops. I'm also a big fan of infographics as a really quick way to use data and visuals and some simple words to get impact across really quickly. Micro infographics, little infographics. I think that's something people could be using a lot more on social media than perhaps they are already.

Nader, did you want to jump in? I saw you nodding.

Nader Ibrahim: Yes, for us obviously telling a story is the best way of showing the impact, especially to the general public, to people who are in the field but who are not going to cut out some time to dig up your annual report and grade it to see how much you've done here and there.

A story that can reflect or represent a cohort of the people that you are supporting is the easiest and fastest way to reach the general public's hearts and minds and give them the understanding of why you are there, why you're doing what you're doing, and what the social benefit of it is.

Storytelling is 100% useful. It does help with grant funding and sharing on social media and website, because usually funders would like to go and look at your website and see what it is that you're doing. So yeah, I think that's great.

Andrew Reilly: In fact the challenge I would set for people is: can you create a social impact report that is one page and visual? Just that. One page report. Then if you go and see anybody, you just put one page in front of them or you just email them one page. I think you'd find a lot more success with that.

I'm mindful that we've hit 1pm. Can I just have one sentence on storytelling because we...

Eddie Blass: Sorry, but the issue with storytelling and putting things on your website and social media is that we're dealing with vulnerable communities. That's why we're social enterprises. So there has to be a really clear ethical guideline on what goes into a story, a video or anything that you're sharing publicly. No one had mentioned that side. We don't do it with kids, because all of ours are kids. So it's out for us. It's not an option.

Andrew Reilly: Yeah, really good point. And if anybody would like some help with how to put together an ethical guideline around your storytelling narrative, that's a really important thing to be able to do. Happy to help people out with that.

I know there are a couple of questions in here that we haven't quite got to and, knowing that Athanasia, we're wanting to close things up shortly, if you would like to send questions through to the Social Enterprise Australia team, they can forward them on to us to connect and then answer. We'd be very happy to do that.

So I would like to say thank you to everybody and hand back over to Athanasia.

Athanasia Price: Thank you, Andrew. And I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Eddie, Rachael, Nader and Melissa for sharing your experience and your time. It's been really helpful.

Huge thank you to the team also who put this together, and again to the Department of Social Services who have funded these. It's so often just informal when we all get together to share our experience. So to be able to put a little bit of funding around peer-to-peer learning is really wonderful. So thank you again for your time and for your questions. Have an excellent day.