A new project is underway that will investigate the collective impacts of social enterprises in Vancouver that are providing employment and training opportunities for people who are marginalized. Demonstrating Value's Community Partner, the Vancity Community Foundation, is leading the project with funding support from Central City Foundation, Vancity Savings Credit Union, and the Vancouver Foundation..
The project seeks to:
- gather evidence about health and community development outcomes;
- develop a monetized estimate of impact; and
- develop insights into how social enterprises can enhance/and scale their impact.
A goal of this project is to increase legitimacy and policy support for social enterprise as a tool for community development.
This project will employ mixed research methods to investigate impact with the objective of bridging shared measurement methods in evaluation that increasingly encompass systems thinking about social impact, with Social Return on Investment and monetization methods in general, that are increasingly being used to investigate and quantify social impact.
The geographic area and type of social enterprise are limited in this project to make it feasible to investigate collective impact. We are hoping that this project will ultimately advance a model for measuring impact that can be applied to many different types of social enterprises and community-based programs, and in other geographic areas.
For more information on the project, and how you could become involved, click here. The Demonstrating Value website will post updates of the project as it develops.
The project will be communicated and shared through Demonstrating Value’s website.
