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Permalink Reply by Evan Mills on January 26, 2014 at 7:12pm

Thanks for sharing this.

The "Impact Report" phenomenon seems to be taking root - I'm seeing more and more of these.

I've been gathering estimates of the fraction of kerosene displacement achieved (starting with all the info in this thread).  I'm not quite sure how to interpret the Luci report, as on Slide 5 it says: "For 98% of Haitians surveyed, Luci solar lights eliminated reliance on kerosene."...

... While on Slide 6 it says "While reliance on kerosene declined with the use of solar lights, 67% of respondents still spend time gathering fuel or candles to light and/or heat their home."

And on slide 13 ...

... "Use of Luci solar lights reduced reliance on kerosene by 96%, resulting in a dramatic decline in the amount of income spent on the fuel."

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Permalink Reply by Yotam Ariel on January 26, 2014 at 10:47pm

That's quite a few contradictions! Thanks for pointing attention to it.

It's always a problem when a solar maker/distributor issues a report on its own product/operations.
Of course all finding will be positive, with only few 'negatives' to make the report feel legit.

We've been working to tackle this bias and transparency issue through the use of BOPSA (http://bopasa.org/).
BOPASA is built in a way that any facts 'fixing' would completely destroy its value. Leaving only one way to operate: show the findings as is. 

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Permalink Reply by Evan Mills on January 27, 2014 at 10:47am

Well taken, although it seems that some sort of third party actually did the evaluation for/with MPower.

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Permalink Reply by Yotam Ariel on January 27, 2014 at 6:00pm

Yes.. though how easy it is to know the names of the villagers surveyed? or see their original questions and answers?

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Permalink Reply by Mitra Ardron on January 28, 2014 at 11:54am

I wonder if anyone has done an Impact Report on Impact Reports, e.g. what are the costs in terms of time and resources spent by (especially small) social ventures on measuring their impact, and what is the SROI of that cost, i.e. how much improvement in their impact is seen for the money spent on that impact measuring ? 

Of course - how would such an Impact Report on Impact Measurement avoid bias, since the evaluators would be the impact measurement consultants whose income is derived from measuring impact ? 

Anecdotal - talking to small social ventures, especially innovative ones, the cost is high, i.e. the negative impact of the cost is much higher than any improvement in their impact.  

From our own experience … for one pitch event we entered, we had to do a standardized assessment (no need to say whose). It was supposed to take a couple of hours, but in practice took about two person days much of which was spent searching the net for standardized policies to "adopt" in order to get the points, policies which in most cases had absolutely no relevance to the organization now or in the future.

On another occasion, an investment intermediary required us to have a impact assessment done if they raised more than US$30k for us, the cost would have been $3k if done by their affiliated impact consultants , i.e. the reduction in our impact would have been 10% (from a $3k shortfall in the investment) for probably no increase in our impact. 

So … I'm wondering - … who has done the Impact Report on Impact Reporting.

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Permalink Reply by Yotam Ariel on January 28, 2014 at 5:27pm

:-) Good points, Mitra! And interesting examples, thanks for sharing it.

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Permalink Reply by Nicola Baggio on January 27, 2014 at 12:47pm

The monthly family budget for kerosene seems really high. From our field data (400 families Hinche) the budget was 6 USD/month for kerosene and 4 USD/month for mobile phone charging cost.

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Permalink Reply by Yotam Ariel on January 27, 2014 at 6:01pm

Thank you for this feedback, Nicola, very good to know.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Cross on January 28, 2014 at 5:00am

This is an interesting thread. Despite the number of growth of impact reports - the 'evidence base' for measuring social impact in the off grid lighting space remains dominated by the stories that companies/and their investors tell us about themselves. There are few if any independent case studies that can tell us what happened to a solar powered lantern 5 years after a person/family invested in it - or offer a convincing account of the complex ways that object might have transformed gender relationships, incomes, or futures.    

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Permalink Reply by Yotam Ariel on January 28, 2014 at 5:15am

Wow! Jamie!! 

Sorry, but I must share this link about you:

http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/social_anthropology/cross

What an experience! Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and I'll email you in case
you have time for a short Skype chat. I'm stuck on some aspects which we share
similar views on, and perhaps you'd have some suggestions, or find it interesting.

Thanks again, Jamie, and very glad to know you.
Yotam

(y.ariel@bennu-solar.com)

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Permalink Reply by Nicola Baggio on January 29, 2014 at 2:58am

Yes, you are right. We are working with a local association in Haiti (with 60.000 members) to collect the data to improve our offer. We are mainly interested to develop and adjust our offer to give them solutions and not only products. Regarding the "positive" impact of the solar lights, it's not under discussion... there are even too many reports for this! We would like to know only what's wrong to make it better!

The key point is that a solar light doesn't solve the energy issue. It is only a first step in the right way.

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Diecker on January 29, 2014 at 5:11am

many stakeholders involved are interested in reporting on social impact and some already do. However there is no standard for calculating any of these metrics, so we have today a lot of different numbers that are hardly comparable. In order to reach a credible benchmarking of and within the industry robust figures are needed. This is why GOGLA has now established an ad hoc working group where GOGLA members work together with external experts to produce agreed-upon, third party validated methodologies for calculating a set of costumer- and business-oriented metrics;

we hope that this will make social impact reporting easier and more comparable in the future.

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