Measuring Social and Economic Impact 2024

First blog post for 2024 and it’s April. How does the time fly!

Recently my email and LinkedIn feeds have been full of impact measurement studies, reports, toolkits and case studies. I wanted to bring them all together here mostly for my own use (!) but also to share with others.

REACHOUT

ReachOut “… embarked on a journey to better understand our social value, enabling us to create more impactful services. This journey has culminated in the launch of our 2022 – 23 Social Impact Report. The report explores ReachOut’s reach, audience engagement and the positive outcomes experienced by those who use our services.”

• Download the 2022-23 Social Impact Report here
• Download the 2022-23 Social Impact Report Overview here
• There’s also a useful framework ReachOut use that can be accessed here

THE SOCIAL IMPACT MEASUREMENT NETWORK AUSTRALIA (SIMNA)

SIMNA is a great organisation to join if you are working on / interested in impact measurement. The Western Sydney Committee held a webinar recently, Let’s talk about Social Impact Measurement, with a heap of great resources, including some practical ways to use AI in impact measurement.

Social impact measurement tools:

• WA Community Impact Planner
• Seedkit

Social Value in the build environment:

• Hayball Social Value Pilot Study (Hayball and ASVB)
• Valuing 50 years of Australia’s icon (Deloitte) – case study of social and economic impact of the Sydney Opera House
• Valuing green infrastructure and public spaces framework (NSW Planning)

Influence of AI on impact measurement, The Charity Spark (UK):

• Using AI effectively in evaluation and impact measurement part 1
• Using AI effectively in evaluation and impact measurement part 2

You can join SIMNA here.

CULTURE COUNTS

Culture Counts partnered with Regional Arts Australia to evaluate and conduct an economic impact analysis of the program and activities it supported. The overall finding was that “The direct economic impact generated by attendees surveyed was over $304.8 million – 60 times the total investment in the Cultural Tourism Accelerator Program.”

The Research Report Regional Arts Australia: Cultural Tourism Accelerator Program 21/22 can be accessed here.

MUSDIGI BLOG

I have previously written about measuring impact, particularly for a project I worked on measuring the impact of festivals and events. Here’s some extra resources from that work:

• Measuring Impacts: Some Background Resources
• How to Measure Social and Cultural Impacts
• Measuring the Impact of Museums and Galleries #TBT

Hope you find these useful.