I recently attended the inaugural ”Social Return Forum” put together by a colleague of mine, Oliver Wagg  of New Climate for the 3 Pillars Network.

Concepts like social investment, social return on investment and a social investment market are much talked about lately by social investors, social entrepreneurs, those generating social profits and intermediaries alike and seem to have gone mainstream – and for good reasons:

• We all want and need to know if our efforts are making a difference to the issues we are trying to address.

• This evidence base to inform further investment has been missing in large parts of the social sector.

• Evidence of social returns is instrumental for those investing funds in social issues and who are convincing others of the merit of these investment.

To state the obvious and track back a little – we are hungry for alternative approaches to welfare funding and need evidence about whether approaches work or not. [Read more…]