Precision is Important in Measuring Social Impact

I was very excited to see the article "Making Better Investments at the Base of the Pyramid", because I am currently working on monitoring and evaluation measures for my Systems Project that is a non- profit, social- impact program. As a volunteer Program Manager for this program, it has been very difficult to try to figure out the impact that the program is actually having beyond anecdotes, and I feel like we are not getting the complete picture. The tool in the article, the "BOP Impact Assessment Framework", is on the right path. I can immediately see how analyzing changes on three fronts-- economics, capabilities, and relationships- would help me to get a more complete picture. Not only does it help me consider the direct benefits incurred by program participants, it also helps me to think about potential harm and effects on secondary stakeholders, both positive and negative. However, I was a bit surprised at the lack of quantitative measures in this framework. Social impact is inherently difficult to assess and measure because of its qualitative nature, but I believe some of these qualitative effects can be quantified for increased precision. The framework tries to do this a little by categorizing potential changes into "Major" vs. "Minor" effects. I think we can go further. For example, instead of simply listing "Increased Income", we can gather more data and come up with a likely range for that increase. In this way, we are not slapping arbitrary quantitative cutoffs onto qualitative results, but we are getting more precise information about each of our quality measures within a holistic framework.