Social Return on Investment (SROI) for Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL) CSR initiative on livelihoods (Prabhat)

Despite knowing and even appreciating the importance of intangible benefits of social interventions, like – increase in confidence and self-esteem, furthering in linkage of social bonds, leap in hopes and aspirations, rise in spending on essential goods and services etc., conventional methods of return on investment (RoI) end up comparing investment made into the intervention with tangible and visible social outcomes like increase in income levels (as a result of programme). Erroneously the social benefits or intangible gains are ignored while calculating the total monetary gains. For instance, Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) would only compare monetary inputs in the programme with monetary outputs created by the programme (in present case – increase in income levels). These limitations in conventional approach can be addressed by following SROI i.e. adding ‘social’ benefits while arriving at ‘RoI’. Through participatory process of consulting stakeholders, SROI monetises all experienced social, environmental and financial outcomes (both tangible and intangible) for every rupee invested in social welfare initiatives of a programme through a combination of Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), Opportunity Cost Analysis and Impact Assessment methods. Entire process of SROI analysis provides a ratio and a story. The story of how the programme has created values during the course of its intervention and after and; the ratio being how much social value is created per rupee of investment. Thus, after due process of stakeholder consultation and primary research one could come to the conclusion “that Rs. X of investment in social intervention has been able to create Rs. Y of social value”. Thereby, helping the management and implementers of the programme to self-evaluate efficiency and impact of the social intervention.