You may have already downloaded the popular Community Value Toolkit - a tool for churches to identify distinctiveness, demonstrate their financial contribution and the outputs and outcomes being made (download it here). Tools to enable projects to identify and promote the social, environmental and economic benefits of their work are now on the agenda and may be useful in demonstrating the need for funding.

The idea of a 'Social return on Investment' has been developed by the New Economics Foundation 'to help organisations understand and manage the social, environmental and economic benefits (the value) that they are creating'. Read (and watch a presentation of) the original research here. You can find out about the potential benefits and the limitations here and here.

What is significant is that this approach enables people to view grants and loans as investments in an project, rather than as a subsidy. This means a shift in how the impact of that investment is measured. According to the New Economics Foundation 'it presents a clear message: that is, every pound invested in an organisation is linked to £X in social return.'

The Office of the Third Sector recently announced a project to bring together the public sector, independent investors and social enterprises, to agree a standard methodology for Social return on Investment measurement. This will place a financial value on the social benefits of a project.

You'll hear more about this over the next few years - and we'll keep you posted about developments here.