money is paid to the volunteer; it simply gives the input a value that can be added up
with other inputs.
Volunteer inputs can also include an allocation of the overheads that would be
incurred if the person was employed. This would cover National Insurance and pension
contributions and also the costs of desk space, electricity, and so on.
The current convention in SROI is that the time spent by the beneficiaries on a
programme is not given a financial value.
2

Forecasting SROI
If you are forecasting your social return, the quantity of inputs that will be required will
Stag
be an estimate based on a mix of:
Stag
e 2 • your experience; e 2
• data from previous years’ activity – if you have it; and/or
• research based on other people’s experience of the levels of inputs you may require.
Evaluating SROI
If you are evaluating your social return, you will want to obtain the information from
your organisation’s management systems, such as records of how many hours or days
your volunteers contributed. If this is not available, then you can use an estimate for
now and this will be an action point for the future.
The worked example – inputs
Look at the Impact Map for Wheels-to-Meals on page 102: the pink section shows
you how the column for inputs has been completed.
The material inputs for the scope and stakeholders are primarily time and money.
In this example volunteer time is valued at £6/hr – an estimate of minimum wage
for 2010 (the end of the period of the forecast). There are different ways of valuing
volunteer time depending on the work being done by the volunteers. In this case, the
value used is in line with volunteering England’s (www.volunteering.org.uk) figure
for a kitchen and catering assistant.
Over to you: Inputs
Once you have asked your stakeholders about inputs, fill in the inputs column on
your impact map. Where required, try to attach a value.
2.4 Clarifying outputs
Outputs are a quantitative summary of an activity. For example, the activity is ‘we
provide training’ and the output is ‘we trained 50 people to NVQ level 3’. You can work
through your list of stakeholders, describing the outputs from the activity.
2 This is currently under discussion within the SROI Network.
2 A guide to Social Return on Investment
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