Growth v. Impact: What Do the Numbers Really Show?

Is expansion and growth the key to the success of an organization? In her article “It’s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises,” Kimberly Dasher Tripp says no. While it may be tempting to judge the effectiveness of a social enterprise by simply looking at the numbers (growth rate, number of employees, money flowing in or being spent, to name a few), it is important to realize that, more often than not, numbers do not tell the whole story.

For instance, Tripp describes the story of an organization centered in Cape Town called mothers2mothers, whose main focus is to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV. One could look at mother2mothers’ expansion rate: “since 2001, the organization has expanded its operations to nine countries with an approximately $20 million operating budget. It runs more than 600 sites that employ about 1500 Mentor Mothers who work with almost 250,000 HIV-positive clients.”[1] This analysis does not, however, look at the way the organization actually reaches these numbers: through a Mentor Mother. The organization’s model of having a woman who herself is HIV-positive has drastically improved rates of mothers being more open about their situation and more responsive to medical help and treatments for them and for their children. The key here is, therefore, trust. In fact, without knowing about the Mentor Mothers, one could not explain the shift of these vital numbers: that of transmission rates decreasing from 27% to 9%.[2]

This echoes what we learned in Dr. Dan Lockton’s guest lecture last week: having a model for a successful venture, enterprise, or product is moot unless communities actually use it. In the same way, projecting and reporting positive numbers does not necessarily truly encompass an entity’s success, nor do they reflect what is really happening in the field.

In order to be considered an effective, impactful social enterprise, is it absolutely essential to show good numbers to make its implementation worthwhile? On one hand, this “proves,” by today’s standards, that organizations are seeing an improvement in the communities they serve, as well as shows investors that their money is going to good use. Indeed, even power dynamics come into play – an organization may want prosperous numbers to protect its brand or even to be able to expand through branching or another model and spread the mission further.[3] However, numbers do not tell the whole story. An organization may be helping a community through immeasurable metrics, or metrics that do not have an immediate measurable impact, such as morale, education, or influence on social factors (for instance, gender equality).  As Tripp states, “cultivating the ecosystem requires different skill sets, namely business and product development, marketing, evaluation, advocacy, and training. Often, funders hesitate to invest in these types of functions because they appear to be less directly connected to impact. Yet, if scaling impact is the goal, these skills are essential.”[4]

 Too much focus on showing the numbers rather than actually making a substantial, lasting impact in a community begs the question: are these numbers really the goal of the organization? What, then, is the organization’s main goal – to help a community in need, or simply to prove that it can? 

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[1] Kimberly Dasher Tripp, “It’s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises,” Harvard Business Review, January 21, 2013. https://hbr.org/2013/01/its-not-all-about-growth-for-s.

[2] Kimberly Dasher Tripp, “It’s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises,” Harvard Business Review, January 21, 2013. https://hbr.org/2013/01/its-not-all-about-growth-for-s.

[3] Carla Tishler, “The Growth of the Social Enterprise,” Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-growth-of-the-social-enterprise.

[4] Kimberly Dasher Tripp, “It’s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises,” Harvard Business Review, January 21, 2013. https://hbr.org/2013/01/its-not-all-about-growth-for-s.