Social Return on Investment for NGO Impact Management Training Course

Course overview

NGO leaders are increasingly asked to show more than activity counts, beneficiary reach, or expenditure rates. Donors, boards, government partners, and communities want credible evidence of the social value created relative to resources invested. Without a disciplined valuation method, impact claims can rely on assumptions that are difficult to defend, while important outcomes such as improved safety, livelihoods, wellbeing, inclusion, or reduced public-service costs remain unmeasured in funding and strategy decisions.

This course equips participants to design and manage a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis for development and humanitarian programmes. Participants apply the seven Principles of Social Value, develop stakeholder maps, construct theory-of-change and impact maps, identify appropriate outcome indicators, establish financial proxies, calculate present value, and test attribution through deadweight, displacement, attribution, and drop-off. They also learn to interpret an SROI ratio responsibly rather than treating it as a stand-alone performance score.

Instruction combines worked NGO cases with spreadsheet-based modelling and facilitated peer review. Participants build an SROI model around a live or realistic programme, such as livelihoods, WASH, protection, health, education, or community resilience. They leave with an impact map, stakeholder evidence plan, outcomes valuation register, assumptions log, draft SROI calculation workbook, and a practical plan for integrating findings into donor reports, programme design, and management decisions.

The course is suited to experienced NGO staff who already work with programme data, monitoring frameworks, budgets, evaluations, or donor accountability requirements and need a defensible approach for converting evidenced outcomes into a social-value narrative and investment case.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply the seven Principles of Social Value to scope an NGO SROI analysis
• Map stakeholders, inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes in an SROI impact map
• Develop outcome indicators and evidence questions for material stakeholder outcomes
• Calculate deadweight, displacement, attribution, and drop-off within an impact model
• Select and document defensible financial proxies for non-market social outcomes
• Build an SROI calculation workbook using present-value and sensitivity-analysis methods
• Interpret an SROI ratio alongside qualitative evidence, limitations, and materiality judgements
• Produce an SROI reporting pack with an assumptions log, findings narrative, and management recommendations

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Managers — who need to connect outcome evidence to investment and programme decisions
• Programme Managers — who must demonstrate the value created by livelihoods, protection, health, education, or resilience interventions
• Impact and Evidence Directors — who set organisation-wide standards for impact measurement and reporting
• Business Development Managers — who need credible value-for-money evidence in donor proposals and funding renewals
• Finance Managers — who support costing, valuation assumptions, and resource-allocation decisions
• Evaluation Consultants — who need a structured social-value method for NGO and community-development assignments

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience with NGO programmes, monitoring and evaluation, programme budgeting, or donor reporting. They should understand basic results-chain or theory-of-change concepts, including inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and indicators, and be comfortable working with percentages and simple spreadsheet formulas. Familiarity with Microsoft Excel is expected because participants build and test an SROI model during the course. Prior experience conducting an SROI study, using economic evaluation methods, or applying advanced statistics is not required. Participants do not need specialist finance qualifications or statistical software.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each SROI stage through short technical briefings, annotated NGO examples, and live calculation demonstrations in Microsoft Excel. Participants work in groups to assess material stakeholders, challenge outcome claims, select proxies, and test assumptions using a shared case dataset. Individual workbook sessions focus on impact maps, valuation registers, present-value calculations, and sensitivity analysis. Facilitated peer review is used to identify weak evidence and double counting. The final session converts each participant’s model into an implementation plan for their organisation.

Course outline

Day 1: SROI foundations, scope and stakeholder materiality

• Purpose and limits of Social Return on Investment in NGO decision-making
• The seven Principles of Social Value
• SROI analysis types: forecast, evaluative, and embedded approaches
• Defining scope, audience, boundaries, and the investment period
• Stakeholder identification and materiality assessment
• Distinguishing inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes
• Avoiding double counting in multi-stakeholder programme models

Workshop: Participants scope an SROI study for a humanitarian or development programme and produce a stakeholder-materiality matrix.

Day 2: Impact mapping and outcome evidence design

• Building an SROI impact map from a theory of change
• Outcome statements versus service-delivery outputs
• Stakeholder engagement methods for outcome verification
• Material outcome selection and negative-outcome identification
• Indicator selection for subjective and objective outcomes
• Baseline, comparison, and follow-up evidence requirements
• Data-collection plans for surveys, interviews, administrative records, and focus groups

Workshop: Participants create an impact map and evidence plan for one priority stakeholder group, including outcomes, indicators, and data sources.

Day 3: Valuing outcomes and calculating impact adjustments

• Financial proxies for non-market health, protection, livelihood, and wellbeing outcomes
• Proxy-source appraisal and transferability testing
• Revealed preference, stated preference, and cost-avoidance valuation approaches
• Deadweight estimation using comparison data and stakeholder evidence
• Attribution analysis across NGOs, government, households, and partners
• Displacement assessment for livelihood and market interventions
• Drop-off assumptions for outcomes extending beyond the intervention period

Workshop: Participants build a valuation register and calculate impact adjustments for a case programme’s major outcomes.

Day 4: SROI modelling, present value and sensitivity analysis

• Structuring an SROI calculation workbook in Microsoft Excel
• Input costing and treatment of volunteer, donated, and in-kind resources
• Annual outcome value calculations and beneficiary reach estimates
• Discount rates, present value, and outcome duration
• SROI ratio calculation and numerator-denominator integrity
• Sensitivity analysis for high-risk assumptions
• Scenario modelling for programme scale, cost, and outcome changes

Workshop: Participants complete a draft Excel SROI model and run base-case, conservative-case, and optimistic-case sensitivity tests.

Day 5: Assurance, reporting and use in NGO management

• Interpreting SROI ratios without overstating causality or precision
• Applying the Social Value Principles to assurance and quality review
• Assumptions logs, audit trails, and evidence documentation
• SROI report structure for donors, boards, communities, and programme teams
• Communicating monetised outcomes alongside qualitative stakeholder testimony
• Using SROI findings for programme adaptation and portfolio prioritisation
• Developing an embedded SROI governance and update cycle

Workshop: Participants present their SROI reporting pack and produce a 90-day implementation plan for applying the method in their organisation.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Social Value International Principles of Social Value, OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria, IRIS+ Core Metrics

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions