How NOT to do Social Impact
January 20th, 2010The momentum behind measuring social impact has been on a roll for a while now, which used to seem an unquestionably good thing.
But after seeing The Daily Beast’s take on impact measurement called “Celebrity Impact Rankings“, I have questions.
On the face of it, I should like this article. It’s a quantitative analysis that measures in real dollars the social return on investment for 50 charitable causes.
But the investment is the appointment of a celebrity spokesperson, and the return is the raised awareness that spokesperson brings to the charity.
How is ‘raised awareness‘ quantified? Arguably, it isn’t. What is calculated is the number of times the celebrity and charity get mentioned together, and a dollar value for each mention.
The results of the (self-proclaimed) “most exhaustive study ever on the effects of celebrity on charities” offered few surprises:
Justin Timberlake (for Shriners Hospital) and Madonna (for Raising Malawi) offered exceptional returns; while those of Paris Hilton (for Sarlight Foundation) and Hillary Duff (for Kids with a Cause) were just sad.
socialmarkets aspires to be open to all SROI comers, so my problem isn’t with a celebrity having impact - it’s with her weight.
Crowdsourcing is nothing if not inclusive, so Mr. Timberlake is entitled to his voice in impact measurement. However, the $9.3 million payout attached to his single voice warps the very fabric of crowdsourcing’s space-time.
I think the bigger problem with this ’study’ is that it measures nothing BUT money (actually I don’t buy the $$-per-article model of the study, so I’m not sure it even measures that, but for the sake of argument…)
Even in a multiple-bottom-line world, money is almost always worthy of measurement. But aside from the balance sheet entry, what is the real impact of a charity’s $9 million windfall, if there is no info on what that charity will accomplish with it?
I feel confident that I can distinguish between good and bad impact analysis, in the form of strategy or tactics… but I wonder if the same is true for the innumerable other visitors to The Daily Beast’s (usually) smart, entertaining site?
I always knew that measuring impact was hard… apparently defining it can be too.