MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION: THE MANAGERIAL RELEVANCE OF THE SOCIAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT FOR MULTI-PROJECT ENVIRONMENTS

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to investigate the capacity of the Social Return on Investment (SROI)
for supplying managerial informational needs in multi-project contexts and the means to integrate the
SROI in project management tools for decision-making processes.
Methodology/approach - Drawing upon the specifics of SROI from relevant literature, compared with
other financial tools, we construe a systematic integration of the SROI methodology into the project
management tools.
Findings – the proposal to integrate the SROI with the project management, by mediating between the
key performance indicators and SROI outcomes; the identification of a SROI-based assessment of project
intake decisions; pointing the need to integrate a time factor in SROI estimates.
Research limitations/implications – The approach is mainly theoretical requiring practical application
through project management procedures.
Practical implications – The paper points to practical ways to embed the SROI methodology in project
management instruments and to the need for incorporating time constraints into the SROI estimates.
Originality/value – The value of the paper consists in the proposal to link the project performance
indicators to a SROI sensitivity analysis, reflected by the integration of SROI in the project management
tools, and the case for including time factors in the SROI estimates.