Social Impact Assessment
What this domain tests
The Social Impact Assessment domain tests whether you can design, conduct and interrogate an independent assessment of a social enterprise's claimed impact. Expect questions on the impact value chain, theory of change, SROI, counterfactual adjustments, stakeholder materiality, evidence quality, assessor independence, and the distinction between social impact assessment, social audit and CSR reporting. In India's Social Stock Exchange framework, SIA reports feed into disclosure and annual impact reporting, so the assessor must be evidence-based and transparent.
Core rules and concepts
- Impact chain: inputs → activities → outputs → outcomes → impact. Outputs are deliverables (200 women trained); outcomes are changes for beneficiaries (income, health, agency); impact is the portion of outcome attributable to the intervention after adjusting for what would have happened anyway.
- Theory of change: articulate assumptions and causal links, then test them with evidence. A logical framework states goal, outcomes, outputs, indicators and means of verification.
- Counterfactual adjustments: deadweight (would have happened without intervention), attribution (others' contribution), displacement (benefit shifted from elsewhere), drop-off (decay over time). Apply these before claiming impact.
- SROI: assign monetary proxies to material outcomes, discount to present value, and compute SROI ratio = PV of benefits / PV of inputs. Disclose proxies, discount rate and sensitivity; never present SROI as a single truth.
- Evidence and independence: baseline, comparison group, sampling, triangulation, verification, stakeholder engagement and materiality. The assessor must disclose conflicts, protect confidentiality and avoid advocacy for the enterprise being assessed.
Worked example
An NPO trains 200 women; incremental income is ₹30,000 per woman per year for 3 years; investment is ₹50 lakh. Gross benefit = 200 × ₹30,000 × 3 = ₹1.8 crore. Adjust deadweight 20%, attribution 10%, displacement 5%: ₹1.8 crore × 0.8 × 0.9 × 0.95 = ₹1.2312 crore. SROI = 1.2312 / 0.50 = 2.46:1. Reasoning: adjustments prevent overclaiming; the result still depends on the income proxy and discounting, so test these in sensitivity analysis.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating outputs as impact.
- Claiming impact without a counterfactual.
- Double-counting outcomes across stakeholders.
- Using SROI as the only measure or hiding assumptions.
- Confusing social audit (participatory accountability) with independent SIA.
- Overlooking conflicts of interest or confidentiality.