Your business is probably doing some real good in the world, whether that’s hiring local people, improving energy efficiency, or giving employees time off to volunteer.
But if you want to talk about the difference you’re making in a way that resonates with stakeholders, you need to be able to measure it.
And there are plenty of ways to do that, depending on your goals. Terms like Social Value measurement, social impact measurement, or Social Return on Investment (SROI) often get used interchangeably – but they aren’t quite the same thing.
In this guide, we’ll unpack what each one really means and how to choose the approach that works best for your organisation.
Social Value: Beyond business as usual
Social Value refers to the additional social, environmental, and economic benefits that an organisation generates through its activities, beyond the core function of a contract or business as usual.
In the UK, this idea really gained traction with the introduction of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which requires public sector organisations to consider how the services they procure can deliver wider social, environmental, and economic benefits.
But it’s not just for the public sector anymore. More and more businesses (like Mars, Compass Group, and Hays) are now using the Social Value frameworks to track and improve their contributions to people, place, and planet.
💡 Read our breakdown: What is Social Value?
The Social Value TOM System™: Flexible, scalable, robust
The most widely adopted tool for measuring Social Value is the Social Value TOM (Themes, Outcomes, and Measures) System™, formerly known as the National TOMs.
The TOM System was built to be:
- Scalable: Provides a standardised way of measuring Social Value across contracts, projects, departments and workstreams.
- Flexible: Adaptable to different priorities at the regional, sectoral, and organisational level.
- Accessible: Outputs can be easily interpreted by procurement teams, decision-makers, and community stakeholders alike.
- Quantifiable: Provides proxy values (a Social Value £) that translate outcomes into financial terms, making impact easy to understand, compare, and communicate.
The TOM System strikes a balance between rigour and usability and is particularly effective when Social Value needs to be embedded across multiple projects or consistently tracked over time.
💡 Explore: The Social Value TOM System™
Social impact measurement: Qualitative and bespoke
Social impact is a slightly broader concept, referring to the change that results from your organisation’s activities, whether that change is social, environmental, economic, or a mix of all three.
Social impact measurement is often used by charities, foundations, and purpose-led businesses to understand how they’re contributing to positive change over time.
Compared to Social Value frameworks, social impact measurement is typically:
- Bespoke: Metrics and indicators are often tailored to reflect an organisation’s unique goals.
- Narrative-led: The emphasis is on storytelling, case studies, and qualitative insights, rather than data-led strategy.
- Not comparable: The lack of common proxies or benchmarks can make it difficult to compare across organisations or aggregate results.
Social impact measurement is a good fit for organisations that want to limit their impact measurement to specific areas, can afford to invest in multiple qualitative evaluations, and don’t necessarily need to follow a uniform framework across teams or sites.
SROI: Calculating value for money
SROI, or Social Return on Investment, is a methodology designed to capture and monetise social, environmental, and economic outcomes as a ratio (e.g. £5 of value generated for every £1 invested).
This captures value not accounted for by traditional ‘return on investment’ calculations, helping organisations understand the full return from their activities.
While this methodology is characterised by rigour and depth, its practical application can present challenges. SROI tends to be:
- Inside-out: The process is rooted in your spending and the priorities of your stakeholders.
- Monetised: Converts outcomes into financial terms using recognised proxies (similar to Social Value).
- Resource-intensive: Requires detailed data collection, time, and skilled facilitation.
- Difficult to scale: Best suited for individual programmes or one-off evaluations rather than organisation-wide reporting.
While SROI has its place in the landscape of social impact and Social Value measurement, it is not typically used as a default reporting tool. Instead, it's often reserved for projects where proving value for money is critical, and there is capacity to conduct a detailed evaluation.
Which method is right for you?
While Social Value, social impact, and SROI each offer distinct perspectives on measuring outcomes, they aren’t mutually exclusive, and in practice, many organisations draw from more than one approach.
We’re biased, but we think Social Value measurement, particularly through the adaptable yet rigorous framework of the TOM System, offers the most scalable and widely applicable foundation for embedding measuring and enhancing impact.
Here’s how the approaches compare in real-world use:
Use the Social Value TOM System™ if:
- You have a need for transparent, validated, and quantified reporting on social, environmental, and economic outcomes.
- You want to be able to compare, contrast, and scale impact across multiple contracts, departments, or sectors.
- You’re aiming for clarity and consistency across your reporting.
- You want to embed impact as an ongoing business goal, not just an evaluative exercise.
Use a social impact measurement approach if:
- You’re focused on strategic storytelling or less structured internal CSR priorities.
- You need to customise metrics around your organisation’s mission, values, or theory of change.
- You’re less concerned with external comparability and more focused on narrative depth.
- You want to capture outcomes that may not be easily monetised but are nonetheless meaningful.
Use SROI (Social Return on Investment) if:
- You need to model and monetise the return from a specific programme or intervention.
- You have the resources and time to conduct stakeholder-led research and impact modelling.
- You’re producing evidence for funders, investors, or evaluators that require financialised impact ratios.
- You’re focused on proving value for money or understanding long-term attribution and causality.
Measuring Social Value & impact: A simple first step
Whether you’re bidding, reporting for ESG, or assessing single project outcomes, the key is choosing a measurement approach that fits your goals.
Ready to take the first steps?
Try the Social Value Portal platform and the TOM System for free 👉 Get started here
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