Through a glass darkly Measuring the social value of universities

7.7 They also conclude that despite these many different accountability processes:“the non-profit sector is many years away from being able to measure its impact on society. Firstwe must make strides towards better measurement of the sector’s outputs and outcomes fromwhich a cohesive theory of behaviour might emerge…”7.8 Overall from these papers there appears much less discomfort in the third sector (in the USA atleast) with the objective of measuring social value than appears in UK higher education. The need tofind ways to argue a funding case is the strongest driver – but there is also recognition that socialvalue measurement could help the organisations themselves to improve their own management andperformance. Di Maggio (2001) highlights that the drive to find measures of value may in itself proveenlightening:“On balance, however, the potential of impact analysis for enhancing the reflexivity of the nonprofitsector, for encouraging dialogue between researchers and practitioners and for creatingsophisticated ways of thinking about the sector and its goals strikes me as making the questworthwhile. True, assessing the sector’s impact is, strictly speaking, impossible. But thenalchemists made significant contributions to modern chemistry, even though they never succeededin turning lead into gold…” 357.9 In the UK, most consideration of approaches to social value measurement have come through theNew Economics Foundation (nef), the Work foundation and DEMOS, (with the latter having also made asignificant contribution to writing about the cultural sector). The nef has developed a useful reference sitewith guides to a wide range of valuation tools in use (see: http://www.proveandimprove.org/new/). Thisincludes summaries and definitions of a range of techniques and approaches to impact measurement andperformance evaluation and improvement.7.10 Approaches in use include, for example, AA1000AS, DTA Fit for purpose Eco-mapping, EFQM Model,Investors in People, GRI Guidelines as well as Social Accounting, Social Enterprise Balanced scorecard,the ‘Third Sector Performance Dashboard’ and others.7.11 The sheer diversity of tools listed (and they do not include all variants – e.g. in Scotland a report byForth Associates for Communities Scotland Making the Case – A Social Added Value Guide 36 focussed ona range of other additional named ‘methods’ such as ‘ABCD’ – Achieving Better Community Development)reveals part of the current problem facing the third sector in seeking to ‘demonstrate impact’ or ‘measurevalue.’7.12 There is no single recognised approach to assessing value; rather there is a plethora of ‘tools’,sometimes very similar, but they are not necessarily consistent in approach nor sufficiently theoreticallygrounded for rigorous analysis. This has been recognised by members of the SROI network – whichcurrently has a blog commentary on the subject of ‘Lack of consistency’:“…The biggest problem that is faced by all of us interested in social value, impact, returns -whatever language you prefer – is the lack of consistency .And yet I still keep hearing ‘wecan’t support one approach’ or ‘organisations should be able to choose methods that are mostappropriate to them’ or ‘small and start up organisations should be able to do something simple’.This general difficulty to go for consistency and standardisation is costing us dearly, not justin organisations that aim to create social value but in all businesses, since all businesses havewider effects than those reflected in their financial accounts. Of course many would not think achoice is required, that standardisation is not necessary. And of course if we had consistency andstandardisation there would be some organisations that would not create as much value as theyhad previously argued, and some activities that do create value that would lose out.But this is costing us all far more than we would lose. To imagine how much, think about a worldin which these arguments - ‘we can’t support one approach’ etc etc - had won out for financialaccounting. All organisations could use whatever approach, whatever basic principles, whateverframeworks, they wanted in reporting on financial value. Not only in how they accounted fortransactions but in how they then presented the account. ….” (SROI Network Blog)17