Measuring Social Enterprise

PREFACE

The mission of Oikocredit is to empower disadvantaged people with credit. In the many years Oikocredit has operated, millions of disadvantaged people have had access to credit through our project partners. During these years, it has become more and more important to measure the impact of our activities. What is the real impact of our work on the lives of individuals and communities? Are we empowering people? Are people's lives changing for the better? How can we improve the way we work, our products and services, to ensure their relevance and responsiveness to the needs of our target groups?

We and our project partners ask ourselves these questions constantly. It is only when we have reliable measurement and monitoring tools, and have the capacity to use these tools, that we can begin to generate the information that would allow us to answer these questions with confidence.

It is in this spirit that Oikocredit supported the development of the training curriculum for SROI and DI and the training for facilitators in 2008. It is in the spirit of sharing what we and our partners have learned in the use of SROI and DI that we commissioned the conduct of four case studies to look at how the tools can be applied to different types of social enterprises.

This resource book for social enterprise performance measurement is a testament to Oikocredit's commitment to social performance and to our continuing efforts to respond to the need of project partners for user-friendly social performance measurement tools.

We are happy to share these experiences with you, and we hope that we have, by these efforts, contributed to the development and growth of the social enterprise sector in the region.

TOR GULL
Managing Director
Oikocredit International