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Management or Evaluation: Practical Application of Social Impact Assessment on the University Social Responsibility Project (USR)

Social Impact Thinking x Qin-Mei Co., CPAs

Dr. Ko Yung-Chuan
Mr. Tu Yu-Jen

 

“Social Impact Thinking” was founded by Dr. Ko Yung-Chuan from Ocean Conservation Administration and Tu-Yu-Jen, an accountant from Qin-Mei Co., CPAs. Having served in the government for over 2 decades, Dr. Ko Yung-Chuan has reviewed countless government investment (subsidy) projects; he discovered that regardless of village development, homecoming youths, new start-ups, or USR, they all focus on what their projects are about instead of proposing how they can address the social problems in question. Consequently, Dr. Ko Yung-Chuan introduced the concept of “social impact management” to governmental project review and management in 2017, and he also obtained the Social Value International's Accredited Practitioner LV3 Advanced Practitioner certificate. After founding “Social Impact Thinking,” he launched courses to promote social impact evaluation. Accountant Tu-Yu-Jen obtained the Social Value International's Accredited Practitioner LV3 Advanced Practitioner certificate in 2017. Besides helping private enterprises and government agencies to compile social impact assessment reports, he is also a specialist lecturer at Social Impact Thinking and one of the most influential analysts of social impact assessment projects in Taiwan.

 

“Social Impact Thinking” was established because the founder has observed that although impact assessment has become an important technique adopted by public and private organizations worldwide to manage and monitor resources, it has yet to be professionally introduced or systematically taught in Taiwan. As a result, even though many organizations have realized the importance of social impact assessment, they are unable to implement it on government agencies or projects. Our mission is to introduce social impact assessment to practical project management and evaluation in Taiwan in an efficient manner, where impact thinking is applied to maximize the organization's missions and values.

 

“Social Impact Thinking” utilizes Social Return on Investment (SROI) for social impact assessment. Our primary mission is to promote the operation and application of social impact by organizing social impact assessment workshops. So far, we have collaborated with the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau, local cultural halls, as well as public and private universities. Through courses and practical means, we can help the participants to understand the 7 principles and 6 steps of SROI in order to optimize the benefits of their respective projects. Aside from promoting social impact assessment, we also assist companies, government agencies, or schools to implement the system in their management process. We have facilitated the rapid approval of projects including the Rural Young project as well as cultural and educational foundations' project evaluation. Lastly, we have assisted prominent firms such as TSMC and Cathay Financial Holdings to compile CSR reports and SROI reports.

 

How do we apply the “social impact assessment” to the university social responsibility (USR) project? This is an important dimension that we focus on. By collaborating with universities, we can help schools conduct USR projects to carry out a thorough evaluation of its internal USR project through workshops combined with individual consulting. The evaluation process begins with the list of project stakeholders followed by training the project team (including project principal investigator, investigator, and assistant) so that they can depict the project outcome and deduce the impacts. Furthermore, the project team will determine the outcome indicators and values before reviewing the negative external impacts of the project, attributable proportion, and whether the same outcome can be achieved without the USR project. The project team will be allowed to understand the process of their projects and think about issues such as the aspects requiring reinforcement, the activities that they should pay attention to, how to prevent waste in various areas, and who are the biggest beneficiaries of the project. The ultimate objective is to successfully expand the benefits of the USR project.

 

From our experiences in assisting organizations to implement social impact assessment, we have discovered that numerous schools' USR project place the emphasis of their courses on specific subjects in particular venues (such as senior citizens, children, or new residents), or they have chosen residents of a region as their course subjects by opening classes in the communities. They intend to fulfill the university's social responsibilities by applying the power of knowledge of universities or by providing professional services to help the local communities.

 

Most of the project team can identify students, teachers, and local service subjects as being the 3 major stakeholders, while various stakeholders also present different feedback regarding the project. As far as students are concerned, the main change originates from the sense of achievement when they are given the opportunity to resolve problems in the local communities. However, they believe that improving their professional knowledge results in relatively insignificant change compared to learning in school. Most teachers believe that although there is a negative impact of increased workload, they have nonetheless forged relationships with the local communities and improved their project execution skills. Lastly, concerning the USR project's local service subjects, we have noticed that many schools are unable to make sure that the services and solutions they have introduced will cater to the needs of the local communities, meaning that under such circumstances, the USR project's service targets may have not attained the expected values and performance at all!

 

Therefore, we think that the correct observation and detection of the social agenda is the key component of the USR project at this stage. Values are derived by catering to the pains and needs of the stakeholders, if we are unable to understand their pains, it will be difficult to ascertain the appropriate value creation elements. The USR project can only truly transform society by overcoming this obstacle, and social impact assessment aims to help the execution team to find the adequate starting point for social innovation.

 

Further Reading:

Social Impact Thinking FB fan page: https://www.facebook.com/Impact.facilitator

Qin-Mei Co., CPAs: https://www.qmcpa.com.tw/

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