It goes without saying that evaluating and reporting on social impact is both incredibly important and extremely time-consuming for social enterprises. That’s why we’re excited to be working with Swinburne University, through the Social Enterprise Impact Lab (SEIL), to help make the process simpler and clearer for everyone involved.
In this groundbreaking 3-year research project, Good Cycles and four fellow social enterprises – Earthworker, CERES, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and Family Life – come together in a participatory lab-style setting with Swinburne where we share learnings, grow our collective knowledge and innovate around the most effective methods of measurement and evaluation.
The aim of the project is much broader than just helping the organisations involved in the lab – a key outcome is to develop an online data dashboard that can be accessed and used by social enterprises all across Australia to monitor and communicate their impacts.
We are thrilled to be at the ground floor of this important work and to be pursuing a more robust, affordable and shareable approach to social impact reporting for the sector.
For our General Manager Liam Crowley, our involvement in this project will lead to being able to successfully communicate our social impact. “It’s all well and good to say to the community that any contribution they make to Good Cycles can have an impact – whether that be buying a bicycle tube or contributing funding – but being able to clearly show what that impact is, then that is success for us.”
Good Cycles is currently only a few months into the project but we are very excited about the positive outcomes for our sector. We look forward to sharing more information with you as we continue our journey.
If you’re keen to find out more about SEIL, check out the project’s website.