Social Impact Calculator
A visual, holistic approach to cost-benefit analysis that examines the full social return of investments and policies.
Version 2.0 [October 2020]
Overview
When it comes to looking at the holistic impact of an investment on the things we care about- quality of life, equity, the environment- traditional CBAs are woefully inadequate. The Social Impact Calculator is a visual tool that shows investment and return from both the government and public perspectives in a comprehensive way that aligns values and outcomes. The purpose is both to help decision-makers make smart long-term choices and to help communicate the reasoning behind such choices to residents. [1]
[1] Cityfi (2019). "Quantifying Social Costs and Benefits to Guide Individual Action". Medium.
Why use it?
The Social Benefit Calculator:
- Makes the invisible visible - The focus on naming and broadly estimating all significant social costs and benefits keep the decision-making process rooted in reality and attentive to typically overlooked and difficult to measure factors
- Has a flexible, open-source framework that allows staff and community members to make adjustments over time to take new information into account, as well as apply the framework to different policies and investments
- Uses a long-term time horizon (30 years for infrastructure, 10 years for add-on investments) to help guide smart decisions
- Maximizes community engagement and informed discussion through a simple, visual interface
Who is it for?
Policymakers, companies
How long does it take?
While the framework serves as a template, it takes time to fill in the specific impacts and estimated values that relate to your particular project. We recommend using round numbers for estimates in order to convey the large margin of error and communicate most simply to community members. We also recommend embracing subjective forecasts or adjustments to research from people with expertise within your organization. Logic and common sense are often more accurate than using "objective" proxy data. Still, you will need to gather those experts and other key stakeholders to decide on assumptions, talk through the range of impact values (we've used 0-30 to reflect 1 full return for each year of assumed lifespan), and finalize the numbers and visual. Plan for 3-6 months.
How many people is it for?
Flexible
What materials do you need?
The Social Impact Calculator is built in Tableau and uses Google Sheets as its database. Note that Tableau licenses may be provided to non-profits at no cost.
What does the facilitator need to know or be able to do?
It takes courage to put up numbers that include subjectivity. However, it is necessary if we are to include the meaningful impacts that are difficult to measure, and expert subjectivity is often more trustworthy than statistics taken from objective research (e.g. willingness-to-pay surveys). The facilitator needs to be able to communicate that the visual is meant to be a basis for discussion and evolve over time.
Expertise in Tableau or other data visualization and software is also helpful to make the tool as user friendly in its final form as possible.
Acknowledgements
Cityfi, Miami-Dade County Department of Public Works
Links
- Cityfi. Lawson, Chelsea et al (2019). "Miami-Dade Social Return on Investment Methodology."
- Policy Application - "The Social Cost of Cheap Corn."
- Investment Application 1 - "Scenario Comparison of Bus Express Rapid Transit in Miami-Dade County."
- Investment Application 2 - "Comparison of Mobility Hub Investments in Miami-Dade County."
- Google Sheets Template
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This tool is licensed under a Creative Commons BY SA 4.0 license. For full details visit our Licensing Rules. 
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Member
Ian Convery
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Member
Madeline Paul
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
My name is Madeline, I am an outdoor enthusiast and current graduate student at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences in Kleve, Germany. Becasue my courses in Sustainable Development Management are remote due to Coronavirus, I am living in Boulder, Colorado. In addition to school, I am involved in a project that teaches coding and entrepeurship to incarcerated women and would like to use my studies to create more inclusive economic systems.
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Member
Ben Miller
Ipswich, England, United Kingdom
Hello! I am passionate about new forms of learning, work, wellbeing, cognitive diversity, and helping young people make sense of future possibilities. I am Co-Founder of the Latitude Project which was born in response to our growing social challenges. Our project’s mission is to use our common issues as shared learning opportunities to experiment and imagine new ways to live, learn, and work which enable everyone to thrive. We're developing a prosperity-generating ecosystem of products, tools, services, and other touch points which unites young people, communities, social entrepreneurs, and investors alongside a common purpose. The Latitude team is developing a social innovation framework, accelerator programme, courses, community and some pioneering work around the creation of social products.
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Member
Jacqui Syndercombe
Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
I am a South African and have been living in France for nearly 20 years. Coming from a corporate background, I retrained as a business coach. With my coaching, I’d love being part of the change much needed in our societies and organisations.
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Member
Terence Latimer
South Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Writer, #meme 🎩 🧐 connoisseur & Hacktivist based in LA. Founder of food justice restaurant 🍕 + platform Food Tribe. I help hospitality professionals connect with foodies + grow 🔝
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Member
Grahame Paterson
Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom
My interests cover sport, education, community development, health & wellbeing, architecture and place-making, change-making people and Impact Investment, amongst other topics. Curiosity. I am on a journey of discovery and DEAL covers a lot of the issues I want to learn about and contribute to.
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Member
Anthony Kelly
Temecula, California, United States of America
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Member
Kathryn Alexander, MA
Spokane, Washington, United States of America
Kathryn is the Chief Strategist for SoilSmart–SoilWise.org as well as a consultant, author and educator, an expert in ethics, systems thinking and change. Kathryn’s early work combined her interest in change, systems thinking, ethics and values, themes that continue to this day. Kathryn’s sense that Western culture was imbalanced in some way drove her to seek deeper understanding by looking into the foundation (nature), and driving forces at work that clarified the effective application of ethics and values she saw expressed around her. Kathryn’s shift to nature as the expert provided a strong framework for effective and harmonious change, in sync with nature – the largest system. The discovery of the biotic pump and the meta crisis we are facing, drove Kathryn to shift her focus into the education and application of this new systems understanding of how rain is formed and how the planet has been cooling itself since the beginning. Designated as a “Woman to Watch’ in Sustainability in 2012 by the Boulder Weekly, she was previously on the faculty of the Sustainable Business Practices Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, Regis University and the Entrepreneur Community Online teaching strategy, organizational change, systems theory, business psychology, and work team development. Her published work includes “What’s It Mean, Shifting to Green? Fascinated with organizational change, Kathryn was an early student of systems thinking creating study groups for the Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge and studying with Fritjof Capra, starting in the 80s. Her change work showed her the impact of tacit values on leadership and management styles. Kathryn developed the model Birds of a Feather™ and a tool for assessing organizational culture strategically, Strategic Leadership Assessment™, and with Verna Allee is the co-author of the Quality Tools Matrix™.
