Measuring and improving social impacts : a guide for nonprofits, companies, and impact investors / Marc J. Epstein and Kristi Yuthas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Marc J.

Yuthas, Kristi, author.

Series:

BK business book.

BK business book

Gale eBooks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Investments--Moral and ethical aspects.

Investments.

Social responsibility of business--Evaluation.

Social responsibility of business.

Nonprofit organizations--Evaluation.

Nonprofit organizations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 254 pages) : illustrations, portraits

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., [2014]

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"The world is beset with enormous problems that desperately need solutions. And as a nonprofit, NGO, foundation, impact investor, or socially responsible company, your organization is on a mission to provide those solutions. But what exactly should you do? And how will you know whether it's working? Too many people assume that good intentions will result in meaningful actions and leave it at that. But thanks to Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas, social impact can now be evaluated with the same kind of precision achieved for any other organizational function. Based on years of research and analysis of field studies from around the globe, Epstein and Yuthas offer a five-step process that will help you gain clarity about the impacts that matter most to you and will provide you with methods to measure and improve those impacts. They offer a systematic approach to deciding what resources you should invest, what problem you should address, and which activities and organizations you should support. Once you've made those decisions, they provide tools, frameworks, and metrics for defining exactly what success looks like, even for goals like reducing global warming or poverty that are extremely difficult to measure. Then they show you how to use the data you've gathered to further develop and increase your social impact. Epstein and Yuthas personally interviewed leaders at over sixty different organizations for this book and include examples from nearly a hundred more. This is unquestionably the most complete, practical, and thoroughly researched guide to taking a rigorous, data-driven approach to expanding the good you do in the world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Overview, Objectives, and Organization of the book

Section 1: Why do individuals, corporations, and foundations invest and donate?

Chapter 1: Increasing the Social Impact of Corporations, Charities, and NGOs

Chapter 2: Understanding the investor's multiple objectives

Chapter 3: Understanding the problem the investor wants to address

Chapter 4: Understanding the investment options

Section 2: Clarifying and defining your social impact

Chapter 5: How to create social impacts

Chapter 6: Clarifying mission, strategy, theory of change, and logic models

Section 3: Measuring and managing social impact

Chapter 7: The basic measurement issues

Chapter 8: Measurement approaches in practice

Chapter 9: Measuring you impact

Section 4: Improving your impact

Chapter 10: Developing a social impact management system

Chapter 11: How to increase your social impact

Chapter 12: Summary and call to action.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781609949792

160994979X

9781609949785

1609949781

OCLC:

870590901