Transcript Social Accounting and Audit (SAA)

Social Accounting
and Audit (SAA)
- Ten Simple Stages
An introduction…
Brief introductions
• Name
• Organisation
• Current use or understanding of social
accounting
What I want to do…
• Introduce the 10 simple stages approach
• Explain the stages – and try them out
• Discussion about how this might help you…
SAA – background…
• Emerged from community enterprise in early
1990s
• Developed through working with social
enterprises
• Social Audit Network of practitioners
• Manual and Quality and Impact Project 2005
• Revised methodology in 2008 – Really Telling
Accounts!
• Prove Improve Account! New Guide to Social
Accounting and Audit (2011)
• 2015 – Ten Simple Stages….
Social accounting and audit is…
…a logical and flexible framework for you to:
…Prove! - account fully for and report on your
organisation’s social, environmental and economic
performance and impact…
…Improve! – provide the information essential for planning
future actions and improving performance; and
…Account! – be accountable to all those you work with
and work for…
Social Accounting and Audit: the
Revised Principles…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Clarify purpose
Define scope
Engage stakeholders
Determine materiality
Make comparisons
Be transparent
Verify accounts
Embed the process
Ten simple stages…
•
•
•
•
Uses the 8 principles
Breaks down the 4 steps
Is still ‘audit compliant’
Uses the standard forms from the SAN Guide
BUT you still need the SAN Guide, this helps make it a
simpler checklist of things to do – ‘entry level’ social
accounting.
Ten simple stages… ONE
Think it Through
• Assess what you do already which could be part of your
social accounting
• Decide WHO will lead the work, will have a minor role in
it or just needs to be kept informed
• Decide whether there is any training that you will need –
and ask SAN what is available
• Decide what other resources you might need (and when)
OUTCOME - a mandate for doing it..
Ten simple stages… TWO
Clarify the purpose
• Write down what your organisation does
• For IMPACT objectives – map out what you do, the
outputs this might generate and looked for outcomes
and longer term impact
• For ORGANISATIONAL objectives – map out your
social, environmental and economic ‘added value’. Think
about the ‘key aspects’ of an organisation with a ‘social’
or ‘ethical’ purpose
Do you have this information already – business plan,
Funding bid, project proposal?
Modified Impact Mapping
Exercise devised by nef…
Objective: To provide training for local people
Activity
Outputs
Outcomes
Impacts
…by…holding
a training
session
Training
delivered, number
attended, new
skill acquired, etc
Use new skill to
apply for a job,
enjoy own job
more, stay in
work longer,
higher earnings,
etc.
Better quality of
life,
unemployment
rate in area
affected, etc.
Relates… To indicators and to
To the
organisational objectives? mission…?
Ten simple stages… THREE
Engage Stakeholders
• Put together a list or ‘map’ of all the stakeholders in your
organisation
• Decide which stakeholders are most important to talk to
about your social accounting
• Start to plan your stakeholder consultation – who you
want to talk to, what about, how and when
Ten simple stages… FOUR
Define the scope
• Decide the time period of your social accounting
• Decide what will be included in your social accounts
• Decide the level of reporting – how detailed do your
social accounts need to be?
• Define how you will know whether your organisation is
living up to its values
• Identify the expected outputs and outcomes from your
IMPACT objectives
• Identify the expected outputs and outcomes from your
ORGANISATIONAL objectives
• Review your stakeholder consultation plan so that you
are clear what you need to ask each stakeholder
Ten simple stages… FIVE
Determine materiality
• Decide how you will report on your organisation’s
environmental outcomes and impacts
• Decide how to report on your economic outcomes and
impacts
• Use the worksheets that you have completed to form a
Social Accounting Plan – these together will set out
what data you are going to collect and from whom.
Ten simple stages… SIX
Make comparisons
• Decide about how you will know whether you are
achieving outcomes, how well you are doing, and
whether you are getting better at doing it
Ten simple stages… SEVEN
Complete the accounts
• Collect and analyse your data
• Write draft social accounts
Ten simple stages… EIGHT
Verification – the Social Audit
• Decide which audit option you want to use
• If you have chosen to have an audit panel – set the date
and decide who to invite
• Use the audit verification checklist to prepare for audit
• Hold the Social Audit Panel
Ten simple stages… NINE
Be transparent
• Publish a Social Report….
Ten simple stages… TEN
Embed…
• Review how you did your social accounting, and the
results that you gained from it
• Develop an action plan for what you will change (or not)
for next time
Ten simple stages…
DISCUSSION…
• Does this make it simpler, less daunting, easier to
follow…
• Would you use this as a checklist…
• In your own organisation, would this be useful?
• Are there any barriers to starting social accounting that
this approach might not resolve?
• What else could SAN, or others, do to help…