IRIS+ and Social Return on Investment (SROI)

Original alignment date: 2011

A process for determining which metrics to measure aligned to the SROI

The SROI Network and the GIIN co-authored a paper to describe how the SROI method can be used in conjunction with select IRIS metrics to help an organization understand its impact in a credible and comparable way.

The SROI (Social Return on Investment) is a principles-based method that provides a consistent approach to understanding and managing an organization’s impact. The SROI method provides a clear process for determining which indicators to measure, and guides the process by which an entity identifies different stakeholders, asks for their perceptions of important outcomes, develops indicators for those outcomes, adjusts the outcomes for an assessment of what would have happened in absence of the organization’s work, and values the impact to arrive at a better understanding of the impact of an organization. The aim of SROI is to account for the social, environmental, and economic value of an organization’s outcomes.