Question More on Simplistic Figures and Assumptions

A recent post on impact evaluation from World Bank blog indirectly highlighted two important issues that affect social enterprises. One is related to how figures are used to prove impact and the other is bottom-up approach in tackling social issues.

Social enterprises are expected to show hard evidence of progress even if they are still in early phase and yet to prove any lasting impact. But figures could also be used for promotional purpose far more than showing important progress. The post highlighted one common way is to show massive % growth for small margin increment which could be misleading to imply superficial impact. E.g. 400% growth to $8 daily farming income from $2 supported by isolated anecdotes of how family lives have been transformed, when in fact there is still a long way to go in order to prove that the program will work and growth could sustain meaningful life transformation. Based on informal observation on early-stage social enterprises that publish their progress reports, I don't see many that are openly critical of some of the simplistic figures.

Another key issue is current emphasis on grassroots bottom-up approach, which makes a lot of sense for social enterprises as they begin with very limited resources and need to leverage on local communities as much as possible. The concern is that it may have been turned into a popular ideology. There are plenty attempts with bottom-up approach, like mobilizing cellphone users from poor countries to use text messages to access relevant farming market and healthcare information, or recruiting local franchisees to run mobile toilets so to improve job opportunities and relieve hygiene issues, etc. No doubt that they are all important short to intermediate-term solutions but they still need to be complemented by top-down infrastructure development like building affordable broadband Internet for wider information access and home-based sanitation linked to sewage system. It's easy to lose track of the big picture when social enterprises passionately advocate grassroots bottom-up approach which is inadequate to address the full complexity of social issues. Both bottom-up and top-down development effort are just as important.

Job Challenge for Talents with Disabilities

When charities work with the socially underprivileged especially those with physical and intellectual disabilities, the common challenge is to match their limited skill sets to market demands. The focus is usually on what they can do, job and market opportunities are also depending on goodwill of buyers and employers. Unfortunately such opportunities rarely exist or will last.

The legacy issue is also a big challenge. E.g. charities typically stick to certain skill and job training programs especially if they have been traditionally attracting employers or customers. Over time, they continue to produce large number of trainees in similar qualification in an overly crowded market place. Blind massage in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur is one commonly cited case example.

Bridging the skill-market gap is challenging especially when it is due to disability limitation. Another closely linked reason that charities continue to struggle in job programs is because the priority has always been fund raising for welfare to complement job programs. It is unrealistic to expect talents with disabilities to compete on a level playing field. At this moment, cooperative business seems most promising in moving forward, especially when such model could leverage on the complementary strengths of disabled talents and able-bodied talents. I hope to see more of such experiments being taken up.

Social Media in Reporting Progress and Impact

Social media has been generally effective in promoting social causes online especially by social enterprise startups, but the hype around it has often overshadowed its limited impact on the ground. Critics rightly pointed out that there is too much simplistic attribution to social media capability like recent political revolts in the Middle East, where Twitter has been given a lot of undue credit.

When it is beyond immediate progress and short-term social impact, social media is simply not the right tool. It may be fit for promoting a 7-day charity donation drive with quick daily updates but not when implementing a 2-year fund raising strategy with slow progress and many trials and errors. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York recently pointed out that social media has created a lot of expectation and pressure on short-term results that could be reported immediately in real time. Indeed, it creates opportunities but also risks to manage when promoting social causes.

We have online social change movement like change.org that creates tremendous scale to promote social activism but it is still trying to figure out a way to improve and track local action on the ground. Popular P2P lending site like Kiva also relies on partnered organizations to scale impact. Without local field microfinance partners and entrepreneurs, Kiva would not have succeeded with only online social media presence to channel money. This is a period where there are more and more social enterprise startups leveraging on social media tools to tackle social issues and it is more important than ever that the real impact should happen on the ground but not cyberspace.