#8. Incubators for premature babies?

Hihihi!

Today's article is rather short, its one describing 4 famous social incubators.

Oh ya, these are legit!! If any one of you are serious about securing funds for a business idea, please READ.

Just incase you guys are like me, clueless about what social incubators are here's the definition I gathered from the article- Programs that provide social entrepreneurs with the opportunities to network with mentors, get their advice, refine their business model, perhaps secure start-up capital by pitching their business ideas.

Since incubators are supposed to promote growth, I guess social incubators promote growth of social entrepreneurs and their ideas/business plans.

So anyway, the main point of this post is a discussion I had with Shaz. 

We met for dinner right, and she was telling me about this malay social entrepreneur who started a business providing employment for the malay community. In the article he shared that one of the biggest difficulty he faced was retaining staff. His idea to combat this was to offer up a portion of the shares of his company to employees who stay in the company for two years. Shaz then proceeded to tell me that she thinks he's really dumb, how much of his company is he willing to sacrifice?

That would grow to become a serious issue because if too many people has a say in the business direction, there will be slow progress. Therefore, I believe that such social incubators are not only applicable to young social entrepreneurs with seedlings of ideas but clearly also very crucial for "experienced" social entrepreneurs whose ideas may still be a little too premature.

Most of the incubation programs are catered for new social enterprises or targeted to successful social entrepreneurs. I believe that this distribution is very useful and efficient as the needs of specific groups of social entrepreneurs can me met. However, I feel that there should be cross-fertilisation of ideas among social entrepreneurs as well. 

#7. How do you measure social impact?

Sooo, the article for the week is...How to measure social impact?

It is increasingly more important to have a standard procedures to measure social success of social enterprises as in this day and age, we see more of such businesses. 

Moreover, it is more important or minimally equally important to have both the social and financial aspect adequately analysed.

The article proposed a few methods of analysis, of which two are an extension of the IRIS system. 

IRIS (Impact Reporting and Investment Standards)

• Organization Description – metrics that focus on the organization’s mission, operational model, and location
• Product Description - metrics that describe the organization’s products and services and target markets
• Financial Performance – commonly reported financial metrics
• Operational Impact – metrics that describe the organization’s policies, employees, and environmental performance
• Product Impact – metrics that describe the performance and reach of the organization’s products and services
• Glossary - definitions for common terms that are referenced in the metrics (Ip, 2012, para.7)
  
  
  This internal tool helps to standardise impact reporting and thus measures impact more effectively. Though this method is not unique to social enterprises, it is a set of performance measures that can be used to describe social and environmental performances.
  
  

In my opinion, it is good to have such measurements. But to improve the governance of social enterprises, the measures should be further developed. Currently the above stated measures are not specific to social enterprises, perhaps in the future there will be standardised social and environmental measures that can be implemented across all social enterprises. I believe other factors such as impact on beneficiaries can be included in as well, though it may be a little difficult to measure environmental impact (no. of trees dying???!!!).. I am sure though that some day, someone will develop a comprehensive and detailed set of analysis methods. Could it be you?   

References

http://www.socialenterprisebuzz.com/2012/10/16/how-to-measure-social-impact/