HKI-SIA in partnership with Social Value International organized a half-day training workshop titled Social Risk Management for Impact Investors on May 26th as one of the fringe events of the AVPN Conference. The training was led by Jeremy Nicholls of Social Value International and Clara Barby of Bridges Ventures. Around two-dozen participants from foundations, corporates, nonprofits and government attended the special training.
The workshop introduced the idea of social impact risks as foreseeable incidents – the probability that performance of social interventions will be different than expected. Different types of risks could emerge throughout the process of delivering social impact that may reduce the likelihood of producing the expected social outcomes (see diagram). A key dimension of the social risk framework concerns “who cares” – i.e. how the risks will affect various stakeholders including beneficiaries, delivery organisations and investors/funders, and the consequences of risk-taking pertaining to the different groups.
Social Risk Management Overall Framework
The trainers shared experience using real-life examples on different types of risks and discussed how measures could be introduced to mitigate those risks. In rounding up the discussion, Clara explained how Bridges Ventures, the UK impact investor, made use of the Bridges Impact Radar to evaluate both the social returns and social risks in association with impact investing decisions.
The interactive workshop was followed by a group exercise for participants to apply the social risk framework to assess the risks of their own projects and to devise measures to manage the risks.
Hong Kong Institute of Social Impact Analysts (HKI-SIA) 