Measuring the social impact of events - A few ground rules
When it comes to investing in events, I’ve argued for a while now on why I believe Government should prioritise measuring success in terms of social impact, and delegate economic impact to that of a secondary measure of success. By way of very brief summary, I believe this re-prioritisation will, over time, have the effect of putting the local community and place first and, in turn, align with a more sustainable and even regenerative ethos that our planet is asking of us.
So, if you’re on board with elevating the importance of social impact, the next step is to figure out its measurement. As famed strategist and philosopher Peter Drucker noted, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”
Before going on to discuss the direction that we here at Silver Lining Strategy are taking in this space, it’s important to frame that discussion with a definition of social impact. Standards Australia defines it as “The change in lived experience of people beyond financial impact that can contribute to systemic or enduring change.” (I highly recommend SA’s Measuring and valuing social impact released in December 2022 as a guide and framework in this space). Other definitions you’ll find generally revolve around the two key words of “effect” and “well-being”. The Centre for Social Impact, by way of example, define it as “…the net effect of an activity on a community and the well-being of individuals and families.”
Whichever definition you subscribe to, for mine, there are three things to take away from almost any robust definition of social impact.
It’s a subjective measure, as seen through the eyes of an individual or group of individuals in the context of their own unique circumstance,
It’s longitudinal in that for it truly to be of “impact”, it must be enduring, and
It’s not, and neither should it be, measurable in dollar terms
During my years of assessing the impact of events, rarely has social impact measurement extended beyond a few scaled questions around an event being “good for my community” or “making me proud to live where I do”. Further, it’s even rarer to see the data from those questions get used to inform decision making.
So, over the past year, as we’ve started out on the social impact measurement journey, we’ve been working with our clients to stretch what we ask of event attendees in our post-event surveying. In line with the first point about social impact being a subjective thing, the questions we’re asking are generally open-ended.
Here’s an example of the type of question I’m getting at:
What does <<event name>> mean to you? Was it just a good day out, or something more?
If there are more specific impacts an event is looking to achieve (eg: encouraging people to move to the region in which it is staged), we’ll ask more pointed questions such as;
It seems as though you attended <<event name>> before you moved to <<region>>.
Did attending <<event name>> influence your decision in any way to move to <<region>>?
If yes, we’d love to hear the story.
Using questions like these for a recent client, we were able to estimate that over the course of its 15 years, it had…
Inspired over 1,000 people and their families to move to the region,
Been the place where over 500 people met their partners,
Brought together over 4,000 people who met at the event and went on to become enduring friends
…all things that have a significant impact on wellbeing, both individual and collective. In this case, we were able to tap into a database that included ticket purchasers from the 15 years the event had been running. This gifted us the opportunity to tick the “longitudinal” part of the social impact equation. For events that don’t have this luxury, we’re designing questions that; a. provide insights into the likely impact (if any) an event will have on the way in which attendees will go about their lives moving forward, and b. benchmark social impacts of any given year of a recurring event.
After many years of conducting economic impact assessments for events, the thing that has struck us is how starkly different the process and outputs are for measuring social impact. For those thinking about having a crack at measuring social impact of events, here are some assumptions you will likely have about event evaluation (likely as a legacy of having conducted economic impact assessments) that you’ll need to check at the door:
You won’t be able to provide a neat conclusion of the social impact an event has had in the same timeframe as what you can for economic impact, ie: the social impact reporting for your post-event reports will be a work in progress.
Your event’s social impact will not be comparable to your economic impact. Attempting to put a dollar figure on social impact does the pursuit of its measurement a disservice in the first place. Trying to do so is equivalent of asking someone to put a dollar figure value on things like their health, relationships, and things they cherish most in life. It’s just not a thing.
Comparing social impact between events will be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
The results delivered are unlikely to be black and white. As such, you’ll need the courage to sit in the grey when delving into this area
As with every other sector in the world, we’re in the very early stages of understanding, measuring and valuing social impact. So, to those wanting to embark upon social impact measurement and valuation of events, we say: Have faith that what you’re doing is important and worthwhile. Invest the time and resources in it with the understanding that valuable insights may take time to be unearthed. It will help you make better decisions. And above all, remain curious.
Doing so will ensure you ask the right questions in a way that encourages the respondent to provide the type of data robust measurement of this space requires.