To study the social impacts of third sector organizations seeking the integration of vulnerable populations, we explored an alternative approach: life-history narratives. In this methodological article, we present and detail the steps followed in qualitative research applying this approach. We depict the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of life-history narratives, from the individual narratives to the construction of a typology, in consideration of the broader social context. We also address the challenges encountered in this type of research and then share some of the general results from our specific project to highlight the richness of the approach. Our contribution offers a deep-seated exploration of complex methodologies that involve working with third sector organizations toward concrete alternative means of impact assessment, and the consideration of effects on individual trajectories anchored and situated in more macro, societal context.

There is no doubt that political science has always been characterised by a normative afflatus. Verba was deeply concerned with understanding how democracy works in practice and how it can survive over the course of time. Lasswell constantly argued that political science should focus on problem-solving in order to improve the quality of citizens’ lives. David Easton clearly indicated that political science ought to focus on major problems that must be immediately addressed. For Sartori, political science should be conducted for society’s sake and should produce useful and applicable knowledge; for Ostrom and Putnam, it should help citizens; and for Katznelson, it should focus on how to pursue “a more decent politics and society under dangerous and difficult conditions”. For many reasons internal and external to the discipline, these normative roots and goals have been forgotten in recent decades. It is time to restore the normative afflatus of political science by pushing it to become more normative-based, more solution-seeking, more engaged and more critical.

Non-profit organisations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their social impact. This paper examines the experience and behaviour of non-profit organisations in the UK in relation to a demand for social impact evaluations. External resource providers request organisations to present evidence on how resources are used and what organisations have achieved. While most organisations are willing to comply and accept this control, they can also resist through using their discretion in deciding what to measure, how to measure and what to report. Non-profit organisations can proactively and voluntarily use social impact measurement for learning and promotional purposes, and as a way of exerting control over their environment. The analysis develops the concept of strategic decoupling to explain the differences observed between what organisations are asked to do, what they plan to do and what they are doing in practice.

Participation in Civil Society Organizations (CSO) draws on and enriches social, cultural, and human capital. Social impacts of such participation as active citizenship are systemic and ‘ripple’ far beyond the immediate program outputs and outcomes. CSOs and the third sector as a whole must demonstrate and gage the difference they make in the social life of the broader community. This research offers a new approach to conceptualize CSO social impacts through an empirically derived model that accounts for the impacts of active citizenship for individuals, organizations, and the broader community. A conceptual model of systemic social impact is presented as it was developed through an exploratory study of a large Australian CSO using an abductive methodology combining focus groups and a survey. Considering the potential of the model that could account for impacts beyond program outputs and outcomes, we propose several propositions for future testing the conceptual model.

This study examines whether volunteering for not-for-profit Organizations (NPOs) which are involved in providing social welfare services and which actively promote sociobehavioral factors like social responsibility, leadership, and self-confidence among its volunteers, reduces an individual’s likelihood of engaging in corrupt practices. We identify two psychological traits: propensity to rationalize (as evidenced by self-deception) and an external locus of control (as compared to an internal LOC) that facilitate unethical behavior. With the help of volunteers from two NPOs, we investigate whether engaging in social welfare activities organized by such NPOs would create awareness about the adverse consequences of corruption faced by large segments of the society, which in turn would make it difficult to rationalize unethical and corrupt acts. Additionally, most NPOs actively strive to develop self-confidence and leadership skills among its volunteers. Prior literature indicates that individuals possessing such qualities are more likely to have an internal LOC and also that individuals possessing an internal LOC are less likely to act in a corrupt manner. The overall results indicate that greater experience with such NPOs leads to a significant reduction in propensity to rationalize and leads to a higher likelihood of having an internal LOC.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) that deliver services on behalf of public authorities operate under increased competitive and standardization pressures. Given this background, many CSOs experience a need to justify why public authorities should continue to fund them. In this article, we underpin and develop a new understanding of added value, proposing it to be the perceived social value of services or programs provided by a CSO that differs positively from the perceived social value of services or programs provided by other organizations and can be identified as functional, altruistic, emotional, or social. We elaborate on these four forms of added value and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this understanding.

The institutional complexity of social enterprises (SEs) often hinders their access to financing from conventional investors. To align the interests of SEs and their investors, innovative investment instruments of social finance are emerging. However, there is evidence of a mismatch between the financial needs of SEs and the instruments offered by social finance entities (SFEs). The analysis of 34 SEs and 6 SFEs through the lens of agency theory shows that some barriers are caused by contradictory agent—steward models of behaviour, whereas others are deficiencies of the SE sector in general. The study demonstrates that the SE financing gap is a complex problem that requires multifaceted solutions.

NPOs and their funders are increasingly drawn to the Social Return on Investment (SROI) method to evaluate the social impact of programs, organizations, or organization networks. While many claims about the benefits of SROI have been expressed, various points of criticism have also been raised. On the basis of both current research and our own experience in conducting SROI analyses, we develop a comprehensive assessment of this method, which is structured along two dimensions: the observer’s paradigmatic perspective, on the one hand, and positive or negative valuation, on the other. We identify two major merits: SROI analysis can provide legitimacy to NPOs or their funders, and it can assist in allocating resources efficiently and effectively. We identify limitations from three perspectives: From an interpretative-sociological perspective, criticism of commensuration and utilitarianism calls the method as a whole into question. From a technical-instrumental perspective, there are a number of difficulties that could, however, be overcome as the method matures. From an intermediary perspective, a number of limitations become apparent that, while inherent to SROI analysis, are no reason for abandoning it, as long as they are thoroughly understood. We conclude by providing suggestions for the responsible use of SROI analysis.

While the links between the fields of social enterprise and social finance appear apparent, academic research on the relationship lags behind practice. This study examines how social enterprises interact with social finance organizations in the context of impact measurement. Through qualitative research with eight social enterprises and their respective funders, I find evidence that both sides view impact measurement primarily as a means for establishing legitimacy prior to engagement, and in the early stages of their relationship. These relationships are hierarchical and rigid at early stages, but over time evolve into more collaborative partnerships. Eventually, social enterprises embrace impact measurement as a tool for organizational learning, and social finance organizations develop more empowering approaches for impact measurement. The level of flexibility and the closeness of the relationship between social finance organizations and social enterprises suggest important lessons for the development of a more enabling use of impact measurement.

Assessing the impact of the nonprofit sector on society has been one of the most fundamental yet challenging questions in public and nonprofit management scholarship. Built on a recent systematic literature review published in VOLUNTAS (Cheng and Choi in Int J Volunt Nonprofit Organ 33:1245–1255, 2022), our meta-analysis synthesizes the existing literature from multiple disciplines and fills this critical knowledge gap. Using 357 effects from 29 studies, our moderation analysis shows that a larger nonprofit sector has a more positive impact on society especially when the impact is political and measured at the city/county level. Studies that used fixed-effects models and quasi-experimental designs also found a more positive societal impact of the nonprofit sector. However, the choice of sector size measure, the selection of impact measure, the use of lagged explanatory variables, publication bias, and publication time seem not to matter.

This paper has a twofold focus: to establish a method of assessing the potential social impact of arts and disability projects and to apply this method to ten such projects. It does so by using a newly developed ‘ripple’ model that conceptualises social impact in terms of the development of active citizenship on the part of all participants over time. The model identifies ten factors (programme activity, welcoming, belonging, programme social values, individual social values, programme networks, individual networks, skills and creativity, programme wider social impact, and individual wider social impact) which evolve through four progressive stages. The original model is empirically adapted for application to arts and disability projects. Qualitative data were collected in the form of interviews, surveys and media reports across ten case studies, each representing a major arts and disability project offering a professional outcome for an external audience. The qualitative data were coded to provide a simple scoring tool for each case. The results support the application of the model in this context. Furthermore, findings indicate three critical conditions which enable projects to generate considerable positive social impact beyond the individual; ensemble in nature; project embeddedness; and networks and partnerships.

Social and sustainable initiatives generally start small and need to scale to create substantial impact. Our systematic review of 133 articles develops a better understanding of this scaling process. From the literature, we conceptualize impact as the result of two different pathways: ‘scaling out’ (extending geographical space or volume) and ‘scaling up’ (influence on public discourses, political agendas and legislation). The review identified strategy, actor characteristics and institutional environment as key factors for scaling. The literature indicates that for strategy a focus on open structures generates speed and higher impact, but we also found critical views on this. The literature shows that the actor characteristics such as the ambition to scale, equal focus on the economic and the social logic, entrepreneurial skills and leadership are positively related to the level of impact. The institutional environment influences actor characteristics and strategy choices and also has a direct effect on the level of social and sustainable impact.

The measurement of performance and the evaluation of social change efforts are vital yet challenging issues for practitioners and researchers in the social sector. Although tools exist to measure social value, they tend to focus on converting non-monetary costs and benefits into monetary terms to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of operations. The capabilities approach provides a value-based alternative that could potentially enable a broader assessment of a project’s impact; this approach encapsulates societal-level factors, beneficiary perspectives, and a more holistic view of a beneficiary’s life. Ultimately, our goal is to raise the following question in the social sector field: what might a capabilities approach to social value measurement that is suitable for practical application by social sector organizations look like? The purpose of this article is to introduce the theoretical framework and to present what some of the measures and instruments might look like, at least in part, based on applications in other contexts.

Employee commitment to an organization is accepted as an important concept in organization psychology. Yet commitment to a project on which an employee might be working is largely unknown. Additional complications arise when the project makes use of volunteers who donate their time for reasons other than pecuniary reward. The relationships between volunteers, organizations, and projects represent a gap in the field of organizational commitment knowledge. This paper identifies from literature the values that inform and influence volunteer commitment levels. Known antecedents of commitment are developed to present a model which encapsulates the variables that should be recognized as influencing volunteer commitment levels within a project context. The paper proposes a conceptual model of volunteer commitment to a project using three categories of commitment: emotional, purposeful and contextual, and concludes that the next phase of the study will test this model and develop a tool that will enable the measurement of volunteer commitment in a project context.

Ever since Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office in 2016, until the end of his term in 2022, his so-called “drug war” has claimed 12,000–30,000 lives. Over 150 victims were children. Seventeen-year-old Kian de los Santos, mistakenly identified as a drug addict, was gunned down on the evening of 16 August 2017. His death prompted a group of teachers and students to express themselves through empathic creative writing. What started as an assignment grew into a community of writers, activists, artists, journalists, and curators from diverse disciplines, generations, and social classes. Four years later, the project found a name: Triggered: Creative Responses to the Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines—an illustrated young adult fiction collection with a dimension of outreach towards an orphanage. The Triggered project illustrated three key features of public humanities, especially during a time of impunity: first, an imperfect but self-reflexive and reciprocal collaboration between the academe and the field; second, the book’s non-elitist accessibility in both content and material; and third, the funds of the book went to an orphanage.

Startups play a crucial role in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their innovative solutions that increasingly focus on sustainability. However, they face significant challenges in effectively assessing their contribution to the SDGs. In our study, by adopting an action-research methodology, we develop and introduce Prosper, i.e., a tailored social impact assessment (SIA) framework for startups. First, we conducted a comprehensive review of existing methods and standards for assessing social impact to establish an initial foundation of Prosper. Second, we refined Prosper based on an empirical validation on five startups. By embracing action research, we aim to empower startups with a robust and user-friendly tool, which facilitates SIA and representation. We also contribute to the literature aimed at overcoming the existing sustainability barriers for startups and to respond to the call for assisting them in reporting about SDGs. We also discuss practical implications and future research avenues.