SROI template for nonprofit programs
Social return on investment is defensible only when every assumption is visible. This template walks the calculation step by step, with the adjustments and the sensitivity range funders will ask about.
Use it to translate outcomes into a social-value figure for a funder or board, or to decide whether a program’s return justifies scaling it.
Eight steps from investment to a ratio you can defend
Scope and stakeholders
Which program, which period, and whose outcomes count. Name the stakeholder groups whose changes you will value — and the ones you deliberately leave out.
Youth Futures Academy tutoring program, August–December 2025. Stakeholders valued: students and caregivers. Volunteer tutors’ own benefit excluded from the ratio.
Inputs — the investment
Everything that went in, in currency: staff time, volunteer time at a stated rate, materials, overhead share. This is the denominator.
$500K total program investment for the period, including a valuation of volunteer tutor hours.
Outcomes to value
The outcomes from your Theory of Change that have an evidenced quantity attached. Unevidenced outcomes do not enter the calculation.
Grade-level reading gain (1.8 mean levels, n=1,214) and reading at home (31 of 41 caregiver responses describing unprompted reading).
Financial proxies
A currency value per unit of outcome, from a published source such as the HACT Social Value Bank or peer-reviewed studies. Cite every proxy; never invent one.
HACT-backed proxies applied per student achieving grade-level gain; proxy source and year recorded beside each figure.
Deadweight, attribution, drop-off
What would have happened anyway, how much of the change is yours, and how fast the value decays. These discounts are where honest SROI differs from marketing.
Deadweight 15% (district growth without intervention) · attribution 25% to other supports · drop-off 10% annually.
The calculation and the ratio
Adjusted social value divided by investment. Show the arithmetic in a table, not a sentence — a reader should be able to recompute it.
$2.05M modelled social value created against $500K invested: 4.1:1, or $412 cost per student served.
Sensitivity analysis
Move the two largest proxies by ±20% and report the range. A ratio without a range is a point estimate pretending to be certainty.
Sensitivity at ±20% on the two largest proxies returns a range of 3.1:1 to 4.9:1.
Reporting it honestly
State the ratio with its range, its proxies, and its discounts on the same page. Say it is modelled value, not cash. The number is persuasive precisely because its assumptions are visible.
“4.1:1 modelled social return (range 3.1–4.9), HACT proxies, deadweight 15%, attribution 25%, drop-off 10%.”
Proxies, discounts, and the range — without the bespoke spreadsheet.
Instrumento applies HACT-backed proxies to the outcomes already evidenced in your workspace, records every assumption beside its figure, and runs the sensitivity analysis so the ratio ships with its range.
Drafts are starting points. Your team reviews every figure and every sentence before anything reaches a funder.
Page eight of the sample report shows this analysis completed for Youth Futures Academy: the ratio, the range, and every discount stated.
View the sample report →The eight sections a funder expects, in the order they expect them, with a worked example for each — so the report you write next cycle starts from structure rather than a blank page.
From the problem you address to the change you claim, with an indicator attached to every step — so the framework is something you can measure against, not a diagram that lives in a grant proposal.
Start from the structure. Fill it with your evidence.
Bring one reporting challenge. We’ll show you how Instrumento drafts this template from your own data, with figures linked to their source rows.