Impact Measurement

At Stanford Impact Labs, making an investment in a research team is just the beginning of the steps we take to put social science to work for society. 

We pair our investment strategy with a transparent impact measurement framework that helps us define success across our portfolio and hold ourselves accountable for funding field-leading science that improves lives. 

Why Measure Impact

When we invest in a research team tackling a pressing social challenge, our goal is to catalyze insights and solutions that drive real-world change. Impact measurement helps us understand whether we are on track to meet that goal and answer crucial questions like:

• Are our investments set to deliver the impact we expected? 
• How do the benefits our investments deliver compare to the resources we've committed to the portfolio?
• How can we invest most effectively to maximize impact?

Measuring the Impact of Social Science

Our portfolio is intentionally diverse, and that matters when it comes to impact measurement. We support research across a broad range of social issues, from strategies for scaling health programs to approaches to government regulation of technology and social media. Every investment can be impactful—but how the research generates impact, who benefits from it, and what impact looks like in real-world terms varies widely.

We consider this diversity a key feature of our approach. We also recognize it creates a challenge. We need to balance the flexibility needed to evaluate different types of research with rigorously setting a high bar for the evidence needed to document impact, while being candid about what we can and cannot measure.   

Our impact measurement strategy directly addresses this challenge through a two-step approach that lets us:

• Pool distinct sources of evidence of impact across our portfolio to broadly understand success within it, without focusing only on what’s easy to measure
• Devote more analytical rigor in cases where quantitative measures add value

• Focus on aggregate metrics of portfolio impact, not on evaluating individual investments, to properly capture the risks of scientific innovation and real-world change. 

   

Step 1: Low-Resolution Metrics of Impact

This portfolio-wide framework aims to be a common language for how we understand impact across our many investments.  

We start by defining an investment’s impact potential, grounded in empirical evidence. As a funded team produces research and these insights lead to action, we assess whether the investment is on track to achieve that potential. We pool all evidence of impact into order-of-magnitude approximations of key metrics: breadth, depth, and likelihood.

Step 2: High-Resolution Metrics of Impact

With low-resolution metrics in place, we can then analyze the investments poised for highest impact within our portfolio at a more granular level. By leveraging a subset of those investments that have enough data to support rigorous quantification, we conservatively estimate our Social Return on Investment (SROI).

For each investment in this subset, we trace the social benefits generated by how the research has been put to use and conservatively estimate the dollar value of the social benefits. We then aggregate these benefits and compare that value to the total resources committed to our entire portfolio. This calculation deliberately approximates a lower bound for the returns of our portfolio: if a subset of investments can cover all portfolio costs, it makes the case for our portfolio-based approach to supporting a broad array of impact-focused social science research.