SocialVentures
Annual Report
Measuring the positive impact of the local social enterprise community
THE CHALLENGE
Gather metrics that will accurately paint a picture of the total impact that the social enterprise community has had on central Ohio and visually present this information in the SocialVentures annual report
MY ROLE
Communicated directly with social entrepreneurs to collect and analyze impact metrics, helped design the annual report to be presented at the State of Social Enterprise event, and helped to integrate a dashboard concept for further research analytics
Brand Overview
SocialVentures, formerly known as the Center for Social Enterprise Development, is a non-profit organization based out of Columbus, Ohio. Social enterprises are considered to be any for-profit or non-profit company that integrates a form of social impact into their business model. This can range from the number of jobs created for a specific, disadvantaged group of people to the number of meals donated to a local organization.
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Mission Statement: "SocialVentures advances remarkably good businesses—businesses that intentionally integrate social impact as a non-negotiable component of their business model. SocialVentures supports these nonprofit and for-profit businesses so that entrepreneurs, consumers and beneficiaries of their mission-driven endeavors are all better positioned to prosper."
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Social Ventures has four areas of focus for developing social enterprises: Outreach focused on awareness in the market, Communication of positive good to consumers and investors, Training businesses in best practices to thrive, and Providing Access to Capital to aid in sustainability of emerging and established social enterprises. SocialVentures provides support through various training workshops, introduction to dedicated funding, and a community marketplace to increase overall awareness of the positive social impact being created.
Research
For the past four years, SocialVentures has compiled information on all local social enterprise in order to create a "snapshot" of the success of the social enterprise community. This information is presented visually through an annual report called "The State of Social Enterprise" as well as by the President and CEO, Allen Proctor, at a local event called Positioned to Prosper. For this information to be articulated in the most accurate way, data needs to collected annually to truly show the ever-growing impact social enterprises are creating.
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One of the main difficulties of gauging and analyzing data within the social enterprise community stems from the lack of uniform metrics. Some companies measure their social impact in volunteer hours, total revenue, meals donated, or even the number of forever homes found for cats. To understand the aggregate impact, however, all of these metrics needed to be accounted for because they all have a significant positive impact on a very specific area our locality.
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For our purposes, the data I collected included total revenue, total jobs created, money in the company's payroll, amount of education provided, number of meals provided, amount provided through charitable donations, social media outreach, and any company specific impact metrics. This market research was done through direct e-mail as well as in person interviews.
Results
The most simple way to summarize the results of this project is to highlight our results from the market research that is discussed within the State of Social Enterprise annual report. By August of 2017, SocialVentures measured a total of 47 social enterprises which provided 1,339 jobs, payed approximately $21 million in payroll, and had almost $33 million in annual sales. Since 2015, the number of total social enterprises associate with SocialVentures has increased from 18 to almost 100. Some more specific impact measures include 35,000 feminine products donated by Aunt Flow, over 27,000 volunteer hours by BESA Promise, and almost 92,000 meals provided by the Double Comfort. These numbers show how strong and caring the social enterprise community within Columbus is and to what great lengths entrepreneurs within our area are willing to go to create a positive social impact.
