Businesses launched and dollars lent might be the numbers you hear most about RMMFI, but we look well beyond those metrics to measure success. We believe inclusive entrepreneurship is a tool for individual and household prosperity as well as broad community and economic impact. Economic mobility, improved health outcomes, reduced recidivism, personal stability, community connections, and civic engagement are all goals of our work, and we believe an important part of living up to our mission is knowing how we support these longer-term impacts.
One tool we use to track and communicate this impact is a Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework. This tool helps us monetize the social and economic benefits that RMMFI entrepreneurs return to their families, businesses, and communities. By combining our program outcomes with external research and financial metrics, we can calculate (and prove!) the value of the social impact we create each year.
Using this framework, we’ve estimated that the social and economic value of our work in 2020 exceeded $4.4 million. That’s $2,239,745 in anticipated long-term entrepreneur outcomes like increased financial stability and increased access to capital and investment. And it’s another $2,162,518 in community-wide outcomes like increased local economic activity and tax revenue and decreased need for emergency assistance programs.
What this means is that for every $1 RMMFI spends, $3.64 is returned to entrepreneurs and our community in the form of social and economic impact.
Many aspects of our work are difficult (perhaps impossible) to truly quantify, in part because we value entrepreneur-defined success and well-being, which doesn’t always create quantitative data points. Even so, this framework helps us to leverage outcome data to demonstrate accountability and transparency in our work, enhance entrepreneurs’ experience and success, and communicate the incredible impact entrepreneurs create for their families, their businesses, and our shared community.
Click here to learn more about our SROI analysis.
