BNP Paribas helps clients measure social impact

Maha Keramane, Head of Social Entrepreneurship and Microfinance, Europe in the Group’s CSR delegation, points out that “social enterprises have atypical, innovative business models. That is why we have to be creative in our way of analysing them.” 

This social impact measurement tool fulfils several aims:

• Enhancing the bank-client relationship and understanding the specificities of the social entrepreneurship business model;
  
• Producing a differentiated analysis of financial aspect in the light of social or environmental goals;
  
• Communicating on and promoting the actions of social enterprises of which impact is the key argument;
  
• Enabling SSE to assess the progress of their impact from year to year and to benchmark their position against peers.
  

A qualitative and quantitative method

BNP Paribas established a method that is both qualitative and quantitative, at times including monetised indicators. To do this, the Group chose to divide the social entrepreneur sector into 7 Fields of Social Action (or DAS for Domaines d’Action Sociale) depending on the needs or services covered by the Social Enterprise:

A total of 400 indicators were formulated around these 7 fields and 3 key questions:

With this tool, the social enterprise can for instance assess its progress from one year to the next in terms of:

• number and quality of jobs created;
  
• number and profile of beneficiaries;
  
• amount and quality of actions, products, services or support measures offered;
  
• positive spin-offs for beneficiaries (percentage of people who found homes, improved their health or income situation, etc.).