HKI-SIA Offered Support to B Corp Movement in Asia

The Second Annual B Corp Asia Forum was held during August 31st to September 1st in Taichung, the second most populated city in Taiwan. The theme of this year’s conference was Converge for Impact, and the Mayor of Taichung Lin Chia-Lung was the officiating guest of honour of the event.

Apart from participants from around Asia, there were an exciting group of B Corp and B Lab representatives from countries outside of the region, including Australia, Brazil, Chile and New Zealand, to share experience and celebrate the development of the global B Corp movement. Representing Hong Kong, Freddy Law, Director of Education for Good – the champion of the B Corp movement in Hong Kong – shared the experience in advancing the B Corp movement in the capitalist city and discussed the difficulties it encountered since the group took up the challenge to build the B Corp movement in Hong Kong a year ago.

HKI-SIA Executive Director Terence Yuen also participated in the conference and was invited to join the B Academy Forum panel discussion on advancing B Corp academic and practice research. In the presentation, Terence introduced the findings of a 2016 study that compared SROI and B Impact Assessment using two work-integration social enterprises as the research cases. Terence also took the opportunity to introduce the best practice guide jointly issued by Social Value International and B Lab on Measuring Outcomes Using the Social Value Principles. The best practice guide is one of the “linkage papers” produced by Social Value UK to offer help to social impact practitioners to understand how different measurement tools could complement one another to better the craft of social impact measurement.

Advertisement

Social Value Thailand, Social Value International and HKI-SIA to Offer SROI Workshops in Bangkok

Social Value Thailand, a new platform group for supporting Thai social impact practitioners, has joined Social Value International as its newest affiliation network in Asia. The group was launched with support provided by NISE Corp, a key player promoting the development of social enterprise in Thailand.

The first training event offered by the Thai network is a series of SROI Accreditation Training (June 5-6 & 9-10; English speaking) and SROI Practitioner Workshops (June 19-20 & 23-24; English and Thai speaking) to be offered by NISE Corp with the support of SVI and HKI-SIA. Jeremy Nicholls and Adam Richards of Social Value UK and Terence Yuen of HKI-SIA will serve as co-trainers for the accreditation training, while Terence will work with qualified trainers from NISE Corp to conduct the practitioner workshops.

For details of the events: June SROI events in Bangkok

About the SROI Accreditation Training

Social Return on Investment (SROI) is an internationally recognized framework for understanding, measuring and valuing social, economic and environmental outcomes. This two-day SROI practitioner training course is accredited by Social Value International and will equip you with a working knowledge of social value and SROI. The course will cover:

• The philosophy behind SROI and the seven principles of social value
• Practical exercises to understand, measure and value outcomes
• Real applications and examples to show how your organisation can use the principles of Social Value and SROI to increase your impact

Evidence-based Approach to Social Impacts

HKI-SIA Executive Director Terence Yuen will be a guest speaker for the 6th Conference cum Workshop on Practice and Research for Social Service Excellence organized by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.

Event details:
Date: March 23, 2017 (Thursday)
Time:9:00am – 5:00pm (Registration start at 8:40am)
Venue:Auditorium, 1/F., Duke of Windsor Social Service Building, 15 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese

Programme Rundown (Updated)

The topic of his talk is How to apply SROI in a qualitative manner?

There is a general misunderstanding that SROI is an impact evaluation tool that demands its users to undertake quantification and even monetization of social outcomes. The talk will discuss how SROI could be applied to undertake impact forecasting without quantification or monetization. The talk will also introduce the idea of “social impact risks” (the risks that the anticipated social impact may not be realized) and discuss how social investors and service operators could mitigate/minimize the risks.

SROI（社會投資回報）普遍被認為是量化的影響力評估工具，應用時必須進行數量化及貨幣化的操作，然而很多服務機構就比較能接受質性的社會影響評估。此專題演講會分享如何運用SROI進行質性社會影響力分析和預測，並會引進「社會影響風險」social impact risks的概念，探討創效投資者和服務營運者，如何能避免或盡量減低各類型社會影響風險出現的可能性。

Registration to the events:
(1) Conference (Fee : HKCSS member $280/ non-member $330 Early Bird:HKCSS member $180/ non-member $230 )
(2) Workshop (Fee : HKCSS member $430/ non-member $480 Early Bird: HKCSS member $330/ non-member $380)
(3) Conference and Workshop (Fee : HKCSS member $580/ non-member $680 Early Bird: HKCSS member $430/ non-member $530 )

Summary Account of Social Impact Deliberations in Two Recent Social Enterprise Conferences

Two international events on social enterprise development – the Social Enterprise Summit and Social Enterprise World Forum – were held in Hong Kong during the International Philanthropy and Social Enterprise Week in September. A good number of conference sessions of the two meetings were devoted to addressing the topic of social value and social impact assessment.

Check out the following synthesized report (in Chinese) on relevant discussions on social impact measurement compiled by Social Enterprise Insights from Taiwan.

「社會影響力評估」的挑戰與因應方案

今年9月社企流來到香港「社企民間高峰會（Social Enterprise Summit）」與「社會企業世界論壇（Social Enterprise World Forum）」現場，為讀者帶來第一手的採訪與觀察！跟著我們從社企認證和評估、政府採購、以及創新案例等面向，一探全球的社企發展趨勢。（文：龍映涵）

文章節錄：
回顧在2016年「香港社企民間高峰會」與「社會企業世界論壇」中和社會影響力評估相關的講座，可大致歸納出幾個講者們共同提出的問題：

1. 執行門檻高，小組織難負荷
   熟悉一套適合組織的完整評估架構並不容易，除此之外，為了在過程中納入不同利害關係人的聲音，得花許多時間進行各方訪談驗證、資料蒐集和篩選；尤其在首次執行評估時，由於還在摸索階段，在沒有過往經驗支持的情況下，所需投入的時間和人力成本往往是最大的。因此，許多規模仍小的社會企業，不一定有足夠的人力和財力踏出執行社會影響力評估的第一步。
2. 工具複雜，選擇不易
   一般企業皆以獲取財務報酬為目標，從會計報表資訊衍伸出的各項指標，基本上是多數企業都認可的溝通語言。反觀社會企業，社會議題的多元和個別性使不同組織的目標通常相去甚遠，也因此，為了評估不同組織在特定目標上的達成度，出現了各式各樣的評估工具，有些聚焦在員工培力、有些重視社區經濟發展，有些在評估成效時也想同時幫助組織達到管理的目標等等。雖說做影響力評估時，在工具的選用上可說是「沒有最好，只有最合適」，但要在茫茫工具海中找出「最合適」的那個，對許多初探影響力評估領域的組織來說，會是不小的挑戰。
3. 成本高昂，效益未知
   影響力評估雖說對內可協助組織改善營運績效（improving），對外可作為和投資者與社會大眾溝通影響力的依據（proving），但實務上對組織的幫助有多大、與付出的成本相比是否合理仍是待解的問題。

要閱覽整篇文章，請按此連結

Role of Valuation and Monetization in Social Impact Assessment

HKI-SIA Executive Director Terence Yuen was one of the invited speakers to do a sharing with a group of green innovation project implementors from the Jockey Club CarbonCare InnoLab on September 30th.

Terence gave a presentation that examined the role of valuation and monetization in social impact assessment, and shared examples of evaluation frameworks that either avoid monetization (e.g. B Impact Assessment of B Corp) or completely embrace the monetization of material social outcomes (e.g. Social Cost Benefit Analysis and SROI). As a basic rule of thumb, the choice of social impact assessment framework is dependent upon the purpose of conducting social impact assessment – whether it is meant for external reporting (proving) or mainly for serving internal program design and evaluation purpose (improving). In helping to ascertain the relative importance of diverse program outcomes from the perspective of beneficiaries and stakeholders, valuation and monetization serve the unique function in allowing decision makers to make choices between different alternatives and ultimately helping social entrepreneurs optimize social value creation in program design and implementation.

SROI Practitioner Training Workshop Delivered on September 28-29

Nearly three years ago, in November 2013, HKI-SIA introduced the first 2-day SROI practitioner training workshop to Hong Kong. Since then, four more rounds of SROI accreditation training were organized. All workshops were led by our UK CEO Jeremy Nicholls who stopped by in Hong Kong to deliver the training amidst his frequent travels in Asia.

This week Jeremy visited Hong Kong again to give presentations in the Jockey Club Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum and the Social Enterprise World Forum 2016. HKI-SIA again took this opportunity to organize the 2-day SROI workshop on September 28-29. It was the 11th SROI accreditation workshop organized in Hong Kong and the session was attended by 11 local practitioners and one overseas participant from Thailand. As usual, the mix of the participants was cross-sectional, with representatives from social innovation intermediaries, a think tank, an international impact investor, a developer, and social service agencies serving the youth and the elderly.

The contents of the 2-day workshop have been sharpened over the past three years and new focus on how to undertake rapid program evaluation that syncs data gathering and decision making (so as to fuel social innovation) was introduced.  Rapid prototyping and user segmentation were the key themes throughout the 2-day training, and participants were given practical guidance on how to experiment with new program ideas for better allocation of resources and the maximization of social impact for stakeholders.

The Our Hong Kong Foundation was the venue sponsor of the two-day event.

Upcoming Events with Social Value International CEO Jeremy Nicholls

Social Value International CEO Jeremy Nicholls will visit Hong Kong and join two separate panel sessions at the coming Jockey Club Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum and the Social Enterprise World Forum 2016. In addition, Jeremy will also serve as the lead trainer to conduct the SROI Practitioner Training Workshop on September 28-29. The SROI Accreditation Workshop (click here to register) will be the 11th workshop held in Hong Kong.

The two panels Jeremy will participate in Hong Kong are Best Practices in Selecting Philanthropic Projects at the Jockey Club Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum and Social Impact Measurements on the Development of Social Enterprises at the Social Enterprise World Forum. Please visit the official websites of the two international events for registration.

HKI-SIA Shared SROI Case Findings in Two Social Investing Events

On September 10th, HKI-SIA Executive Director Terence Yuen shared SROI case findings of the Hong Kong Housing Society’s Ageing In Place Initiative in two separate events joined by local social investors and social entrepreneurship practitioners. The two events were separately organized by the Fullness Social Enterprise Society (FSES) and the HK+Acumen.

In the HK+Acumen 2nd Annual Impact Investment Forum, Terence gave a presentation on Social Investment in Elderly Care and made the case that innovative investments from both the public and private sectors would need to employ measurement systems to ensure cost-effectiveness in resource utilization and maximization of investment returns. The Ageing In Place SROI study was used to illustrate how an SROI study with a high-level of rigour could be used to support investment decisions in long-term care on the one hand and program design decisions for continuous service improvement on the other hand.

In the FSES 5th Anniversary impact measurement forum, a shorter presentation titled Proving vs. Improving was delivered and the presentation is to highlight the importance for ascertaining the objectives of social impact assessment. Rather than merely focusing on picking the impact assessment tools, it was argued that it is way more important to think through why we want to conduct social impact assessment in the first place. The Ageing In Place SROI findings were again used to make the case that while many organizations consider the primary objective of impact evaluation is for proving program effectiveness, it is in fact most valuable for program operators to first think about using social impact assessment to support continuous program improvement for the maximizing of social value creation.

Public Seminar on Managing Social Value Creation & Collective Impact

HKI-SIA and Social Value International co-organized a public seminar in the afternoon of May 26th, titled Managing Social Value Creation and Collective Impact. Sponsored by the Xu Family Charitable Foundation, the seminar was a fringe event of the AVPN Conference and was attended by around 70 participants around two-third of which were from the government and social sectors, while the remaining participants were from impact investing and corporate sectors. The speakers and detailed programme of the event are listed at the end of this post (the speaker profiles could be found here.)

In the first part of the seminar, Professor David Weimer shared his experience in applying benefit-cost analysis as a decision-making model for guiding social policy planning and implementation in the US. Tony Luh and Terence Yuen then responded to Prof Weimer’s presentation in two different angles. Using cases in rural China, Tony offered vivid examples to show the importance of evidence-based impact evaluation for highlighting areas of overlooked service needs and how impact assessment could support policy advocacy and help arouse the awareness of policymakers at the national level. Terence shared SROI findings of the Ageing In Place initiative of the Hong Kong Housing Society implemented in 11 housing estates involving some two thousand elders. The local example again demonstrated the importance in applying social impact assessment in the planning and implementation of social policy.

The second part of seminar included four presentations. Ken Ito from Tokyo discussed latest policy developments in Japan in relation to social investment and social finance; in particular, three pilot cases of social impact bonds in the areas of recidivism, child adoption, and dementia prevention were introduced. Using a set of slides consisting of only emojis, Kelvin Cheung of UnLtd HK discussed how the start-up incubator would walk alongside the young entrepreneurs in their journey of entrepreneurial success, suggesting that impact communication plays an essential role in that journey. Jeremy Nicholls then discussed latest developments in the corporate world on impact measurement, with an emphasis on how CEOs and corporate boards have now moved to embed social impact assessment as an integral part of management decision-making to deliver value to all stakeholders. The last speaker Stephen Wong offered the overall concluding remarks reflecting on the worldwide movements as depicted by the other speakers while noting the increased level of awareness by think tanks and policy makers locally in Hong Kong.

*****

The public seminar Managing Social Value Creation and Collective Impact was delivered in two parts:

Part 1: Evidence-based Program Evaluation and Policy Intervention
David Weimer, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Tony Luh, Yifang Foundation (Beijing, China)
Terence Yuen, Hong Kong Institute of Social Impact Analysts
(Moderator, Jeremy Nicholls of Social Value International)

Part 2: Engendering Cross-sector Collaboration to Drive Collective Impact
Stephen Wong, Our Hong Kong Foundation
Ken Ito, The SROI Network Japan
Kelvin Cheung, UnLtd HK
Jeremy Nicholls, Social Value International
(Moderator, Terence Yuen of Hong Kong Institute of Social Impact Analysts)

 

HKI-SIA Completed Two Research Studies Funded by SISE

Earlier in 2016 the Institute submitted two final research reports to the SISE (Funding Scheme for Studies/Projects on Social Impact of Social Enterprises) which was established by the Social Enterprise Advisory Committee (SEAC) under the Hong Kong Government Home Affairs Bureau. The two research projects are:

1. SROI and B Impact Assessment Comparative Study
The research team assessed the social impact of two social enterprises – Fullness Salon and Fullness Auto Repair – using both B Impact Assessment and Social Return on Investment. The research findings shed light on the complementarities as well as the strengths and weaknesses of these two major impact assessment tools in the context of small-scale work integration social enterprises. The report also addressed the notion of portfolio management in social investing and examined two impact management frameworks: the international Bridges IMPACT Radar and the locally developed SVhk IMPACT Framework.

2. Use of SROI as a Valuation Tool for Social Enterprise in DPO
The research aims to apply SROI as a enterprise valuation tool in a hypothetical Direct Public Offering (DPO) exercise for fund raising for a social enterprise. Social enterprises face the challenge to raise funds in the capital market, and it has the exceptional challenge to demonstrate its social impact in monetized terms for assessment by potential impact investors. Using SROI as a tool for corporate valuation, this research demonstrated how corporate valuation could be undertaken for a social enterprise and also produced a hypothetical DPO Prospectus for the capital raising. The research aims to broaden the scope of accounting for value for supporting the development of the social capital market.

On March 24th the Executive Director of HKI-SIA Terence Yuen presented the key findings of the DPO valuation research to the Social Enterprise Advisory Committee and shared views with the Committee members on how to promote social impact assessment in the Hong Kong context.