How do you define ethical practice in social impact? Mary Cook from Uscreates discusses the challenge of analysing social impact ethically:
‘How are you defining ethics?’ I was asked this at a recent event, where I was presenting learning on the ethical challenges of achieving social impact within our work at Uscreates. It was an obvious question and yet one that I still hadn’t fully prepared for. When the topic is so subjective, it is difficult to give a definitive answer. But for me, the ethics of social impact boils down to best practice: ensuring all involved in and affected by a project have been considered, communicated with and collaborated with.
When it comes to measuring social impact, the way in which the impact has been achieved is just as important as what has been achieved. Currently, social impact measurement tends to focus on calculating the people reached, the behaviours changed and the ROI, so it is easy to overlook some important questions:
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Has the desired impact of the project been achieved without causing negative impact elsewhere?
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Who is ultimately responsible for the positive and/or negative impact of the work, and who will be accountable for its effects in the future?
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What were the advantages and disadvantages of intervening in one area to create social impact, rather than another?
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Have expectations been managed – were those involved able to anticipate the outcomes?
These questions are crucial in the analysis of social impact and must be considered. If they are not, a narrow focus on achieving the impact could lead to the use of inappropriate methods.
This post is an excerpt from Mary's full blog on the subject which can be found on the SIAA blog here. Contribute to the discussion on twitter at #SIAATT and follow Mary at @CookMary.
