Because you always tend to remember the first time, SOCAP 2011 holds a special place for me. After the dive into exploring the field of social innovation through Innov8Social, this year was my first time attending the Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP) in San Francisco in early September. (Note: this year’s conference has been expertly covered right here on SocialEarth in posts by JocelynL).
Scoping out SOCAP
In talking to other conference attendees, catching up on interesting sessions, and taking in the sights of SOCAP11, I began to see that there were a few big questions that kept coming up.
One such big question that has stayed with me, was asked by Craig. Yup, the one whose list we all use.
Craig Newmark and the Social Impact Question
In Craig’s keynote conversation at SOCAP11, he sat down with SOCAP Co-founder Kevin Jones to talk about the origins of craigslist, his belief in the concept of “doing well while doing good”, and the focus of his philanthropic site craigconnects.org.
And he issued out a kind of challenge to the savvy social innovators in the crowd.
Figure out a way to help him measure the social impact of craigslist more concretely.
That’s 30 Billion with a B
Craig said that craigslist has helped approximately 100M in the country—by connecting jobseekers with jobs, helping CL-ers find places to live, and helping people buy, sell, and trade everything from couches to cars. He said he hears from people who get through the day by using the free section of craigslist, and put food on the table by using the barter section of the site.
But, how do you measure that. How can you begin to quantify the social impact of a sharing economy such as the one craigslist facilitates?
With over 30 billion page views per month, there may be equally compelling data of positive social impact resulting from using craigslist. And even data shedding light on non-positive impacts.
Craig mentioned that craigslist has given away an estimated $1.5 billion worth of ad space to non-profits—another social measure of craigslist calling for social impact measurement.
A Challenge on the Table
Though couched in a lot of other really interesting history and information, his oblique challenge captured my attention, and imagination. While there are new, emerging ways to measure social impact—can we make them uniformly accepted, easily quantifiable, and readily scalable to be able to analyze craigslist?
And what are the ‘units of social impact’? Are they numbers of people helped, environmental impact of things reused rather than thrown out, or can we somehow determine the number of people that bypassed poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the like by using craigslist?
And how do we capture data for non-positive impact of craigslist? Does it offset the ‘social impact units’?
As my understanding of social innovation expands and becomes more nuanced, I am realizing that one of the greatest challenges of the field is also one of its greatest hidden assets….it is the ability to accurately, effectively, and globally measure its own impact.
What do you think?
I seem to find myself with more questions than answers at this point. And that’s why I pass along Craig’s question, and challenge, over to the bright thinkers of SocialEarth and beyond. What do you think?
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