Two well known Northern Ireland social enterprises, Work West from Belfast and Cúnamh ICT from Derry, have come together to roll out a new social impact measurement tool for the sector.

Social Impact Tracker is a resource that social enterprises and voluntary and community organisations can use to manage their client and project information. The system is pre-set with monitoring forms and templates for funders such as ESF/DEL, the Community Relations Council, and soon, Peace III. It can save your group days in administration terms as you roll out your projects. The system can also link your organisation’s activities to your social objectives, allowing you to take your project monitoring to the next level and also start reporting on your social impact. Work West have used the Social Impact Tracker Pro version for the last 18 months in their work in the enterprise support arena. Rachel Marshall, Programme Manager at Work West says, “The tool has proved to be a great resource for us to manage our non-financial programme information and track the distance travelled by participants on our initiatives. We have partnered with Cúnamh ICT to help promote the tool to other groups across NI who could also benefit from it. There was a bit of work involved in setting up the database, but now it’s up and running it saves us so much time”. Peter MacCafferty, Managing Director of Cúnamh ICT, who developed the tool and its sister product, eFamily, is delighted to have formed a partnership with Work West. He states, “Work West are a key support… Work West use the system themselves so they understand it from a user’s point of view and can help other groups embed it within their organisations and to understand how the outcome measurement functions of the tool work.” To see the Social Impact Tracker tool for yourself, come and join Work West from 10.30am on Thursday 17th December for a coffee morning, mince pies and a demonstration in the new Work West Social Economy Village, Hannahstown Hill, Belfast.