Measuring Social Outcomes Conference

The CSI Measuring Social Outcomes conference, held in partnership with Criterion Conferences, saw more than 300 people attend the two-day event at the Sofitel Wentworth in Sydney with delegates coming from around Australia and New Zealand.

Centre for Social Impact CEO Dr Andrew Young presented the opening address where he explored the value of measurement for social impact.

“Australia, with its strong underlying social systems, has the opportunity in the next 5-10 years to really make some strides in improving the effectiveness of our social impact system” and “to base what we do on the stronger definition and measurement of outcomes,” Andrew said. 

He defined the “social impact system” as the “ways in which we try to create positive social outcomes in Australia across government, not-for-profit, social enterprise and corporate.”

Andrew said the large number of delegates was a “very encouraging sign” that the measuring outcomes space was attracting increasing interest.

Paul Ronalds from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet told the conference that the subject of how to drive productivity improvements in the social sector was a “critical issue”.

“Measuring social outcomes effectively is one of the issues that should be right at the top of policy makers’ agendas,” Ronalds said.

Keynote speaker Jeremy Nicholls, Chief Executive of the UK Social Return on Investment (SROI) Network, tapped into a Valentine’s day theme, encouraging the audience to ‘Love their outcomes’ as well as exploring ‘what not to do’ in a discussion on the ‘Seven deadly sins of outcomes measurement’.

Videos of the key conference speeches, including Jeremy Nicholls, Andrew Young and Paul Ronalds, are now available on the CSI YouTube channel here.

Read the blogs from conference attendees here.

Read the ProBono News story here.