Social Impact Investing

SOCIAL IMPACT INVESTMENT: BUILDING THE EVIDENCE BASE
6.2. Data types and data collection purposes
6.6 Before engaging in data collection it is important to clarify the goal of collecting the data.
Policymakers might be interested in collecting data to monitor market developments, forecast future
developments or evaluate policy interventions. Such data will necessarily need to include information on
social needs and social outcomes. These objectives are different from those of other market participants
that might want to collect data, for example, to inform investors of investment opportunities. In this case,
relevant data will include current risk-return profiles, benchmarking, and forecasting potential market (and
segment) growth, inter alia. Some players (mostly intermediaries) collect data as part of their business
model, as it will be discussed later.
6.7 Different data types serve these different purposes. For example, while monitoring the market
essentially requires data on SII transactions (deals and volumes), forecasting will need a good
understanding of potential demand and supply. In doing so, we make a clear distinction between potential
demand and supply on the one hand, and effective demand and supply and transactions (i.e. satisfied
demand) on the other hand.
6.8 For example, looking at the demand-side for SII ( a parallel can be drawn to the supply-side),
potential demand for SII originates from unmet social needs (discussed in Chapter 5) and is translated into
the SII market through delivery organisations that require funding to address such needs. Most currently
available data on SII demand concerns potential demand (see Section 6.3). In other words, it measures a
population of social delivery organisations that could potentially be SII investees. However, it is important
to note that not all social delivery organisations will become investees. This will depend on their financing
needs and funding preferences as discussed in Chapter 3. Legal structures are also important as they may
inhibit some SII-type of funding (e.g. NPIs). Therefore, only a fraction of the social enterprise sector, for
example, will be SII investees.
6.9 Second, it should be clear that identifying the potential demand for SII is different from
measuring effective demand for SII. Some reports (e.g. NAB reports; Brown and Swersky, 2012) focus on
identifying the scope for future SII demand, which contrasts for example with the information coming
from surveys that aims at identifying financing needs within delivery organisations (see Section 6.3).
6.10 Third, satisfied demand is the effective demand that is matched by capital providers\investors
(possibly through intermediaries) and results in SII transactions, including deals and flows. 24 The nature
and sources of data that allow identifying the scope of potential and\or effective demand\supply, as well as
transactions is likely to be different. For example, while transaction data will mainly come from
intermediaries, estimating potential demand will require, inter alia, a combination of governmental data
and detailed financial information on delivery organisations. Therefore, it is very important to decide a
priori what type of data is needed to serve the purpose of a specific data collection effort.
6.3. Review of Existing Data Sources: Data sources by framework component
6.11 Overall, current data availability on SII is very limited. A comprehensive picture of the SII
market requires sizing the different components as discussed in Chapter 3: i) SII demand (including social
needs and social service providers); ii) SII supply (i.e. pools of capital and investors); iii) SII
intermediaries and financing instruments.
6.12 Annex 6.1 provides a list of SII data sources for G7 countries and Australia. The UK is the
country in which most data is available, as a result of 10 year track record of SII market building, as well
24 . Returns and other relevant data associated with SII flows is considered here to be part of transactions.
© OECD 2015 81