Understanding Social Impact and How to Measure It

Abstract

This chapter addresses the knowledge gap between bringing sustainable energy solutions to people and finding out whether the social changes observed (if any) among those people can be directly attributed to the solutions that were introduced. The importance of adequate impact evaluation cannot be overstated. For funders and implementers of development programmes, effective evaluation of both intended and unintended outcomes of an intervention is critical for managerial decision making, cost adjustments, business model pivoting and impact scaling. Similarly, technology developers would be eager to know if the solutions they bring to end users really create the impact intended. We highlight the need to understand social impact evaluation as more than a mid- or post-intervention assessment exercise; instead, impact evaluation should be incorporated alongside the initial outcomes planning and monitoring of an intervention. This ensures the robustness and validity of outcomes and impact evaluation later. This chapter will explain the key concepts of impact evaluation, and then discuss how evaluation can be done by providing overviews to commonly used evaluation methods.