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Why we measure social impact, and which methodology this tool uses

This tool applies the IER Model V5.3 methodology, developed at the Institute for Economic Research (IER) in Ljubljana. This page explains why measuring social impact matters, who built the methodology, which frameworks it rests on, and how this tool relates to the official IER framework.

1. Why measure social impact

Climate change, rising inequality, and the loss of biodiversity have forced organisations to look beyond financial results. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has framed it bluntly in the foreword to the latest Global Sustainable Development Report (UN, 2019): the world we know and the future we want are both under threat. Today's challenges require immediate behavioural changes from individuals and organisations and a fundamental reshaping of development goals.

Measuring and reporting non-financial outcomes has therefore moved from voluntary signalling to legal obligation for large and mid-sized firms. Regulation, the institutionalisation of ESG (environmental, social, governance) goals, and the maturation of frameworks like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) have all pushed organisations to make their social and environmental footprint legible, comparable, and auditable.

Social enterprises (in Slovenia: socialna podjetja, abbreviated so.p.) are a special case. Their mission is non-financial by design. Funders, governments, and the public expect them to demonstrate the social impact they create — but until recently no single Slovenian standard existed for doing so. The IER Model V5.3 is that standard.

2. The IER Model V5.3

Model za merjenje družbenih učinkov socialnih podjetij (Model for measuring the social impact of social enterprises) is the methodology developed by the Institute for Economic Research (Inštitut za ekonomska raziskovanja, IER) in Ljubljana. It is structured as five sequential modules; users move from defining context and assumptions, through planning, measurement, analysis, and finally report generation.

It is the framework on which the institutionalised reporting practice for Slovenian social enterprises rests, and was formally presented as the national methodology by the relevant ministry in October 2022 (Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, news release, 24 October 2022).

The Slovenian legal and institutional context the methodology operates inside:

3. How the framework was built

The Model was developed within the applied research project V5-2123 »Izdelava aplikativnega modela za merjenje družbenih učinkov socialnih podjetij« (»Development of an applied model for measuring the social impact of social enterprises«), part of the Slovenian Targeted Research Programme CRP 2021. The project was co-funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS, today ARIS) and the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MGRT, today MGTŠ).

Key milestones:

The full project page, including the formal description, funding sources and dissemination outputs, is published by IER at ier.si / projekti / Izdelava aplikativnega modela ….

4. Authors

The methodology is the work of a research team at IER:

The 2023 monograph was peer-reviewed by Alenka Slavec Gomezel, PhD, and Peter Stanovnik, PhD; series editor Damjan Kavaš, PhD. All authors and reviewers are based at, or affiliated with, the Institute for Economic Research.

Disclosure: the founder of ScAIentist® (Luka Radičević) is a researcher at IER, but this tool is an independent ScAIentist® product. The IER framework is public; we do not claim IER endorsement and have not been formally endorsed by IER.

5. Scientific foundations

The Model rests on four established methodologies and standards, plus the UN Sustainable Development Goals as its outward-facing reference frame:

  1. Theory of Change — the chain inputs → activities → conditions → outputs → outcomes → impacts. Documented by the Center for Theory of Change.
  2. Impact Value Chain — the same chain, framed in OECD vocabulary, drawing on Social Impact Measurement for the Social and Solidarity Economy (OECD, 2021).
  3. Integrated Reporting <IR> Framework — the six-capitals model, maintained by the IFRS Foundation. The Model uses four of the six capitals (productive, human, intellectual, financial) and treats social and natural capital as external targets of measurement rather than organisational capital. integratedreporting.ifrs.org.
  4. IRIS+ — the catalogue of impact indicators maintained by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN — thegiin.org). The Model uses IRIS+ as its default catalogue (~600 indicators) and allows organisations to define custom indicators where IRIS+ does not cover their measurement needs. iris.thegiin.org.
  5. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — every social problem in a report is mapped to up to three of the 17 SDGs. sdgs.un.org/goals.

The monograph (§3.3) situates the IER Model inside the broader family of non-financial reporting standards that any so.p. is likely to encounter. We list them here so the terminology stays consistent and the reader can follow up where relevant:

6. The five modules

  1. Module 1 — Izhodišča in predpostavke (Foundations and assumptions). Register data, activity status, reporting purpose, capital, primary activity area, stakeholders and target groups, social problems with SDG mapping, and the Theory-of-Change logic per problem.
  2. Module 2 — Priprava načrta merjenja (Measurement plan). For each indicator: which IRIS+ indicator (or custom indicator), data source, who measures, and how often.
  3. Module 3 — Merjenje (Measurement). The actual values, units, and any comments per indicator and reporting year.
  4. Module 4 — Prikaz rezultatov in analiza (Display and analysis). Multi- year trend, target-population coverage, planned vs actual, productivity, and cost-benefit (the last only in management-mode reporting).
  5. Module 5 — Oblikovanje poročila (Report output). A standardised report assembled from the previous four modules.

7. Three reporting purposes

The Model supports three reporting purposes with progressively wider scope:

8. Our role: same methodology, different interface

The IER team built the methodology and shipped it as a macro-enabled Excel workbook (Model_V5.3_…xlsm). That workbook is sound but in daily use can be hard to navigate, especially for early-stage ventures, incubators tracking many ventures at once, and organisations new to social-impact measurement.

ScAIentist® rebuilt the user experience around the same methodology — same modules, same terminology, same indicator catalogue, same reporting purposes. The IRIS+ taxonomy, the five modules, the SDG mapping, the Theory-of-Change structure: all are preserved verbatim. Only the input surface has changed. The original IER workbook remains fully usable for official filing; this tool applies the same logic with a more guided interface and a free public report URL.

9. Relation to the official Excel template

We ship two Excel export options from Step 5 of the wizard:

Coverage of the official-template export: Modules 1, 2 and 3 are fully written — identification (matična), responsible person, reporting purpose, stakeholders and target groups, social problems with SDG mapping, Theory of Change (long-term and intermediate goals plus activities per problem), capital items (extended only), the full indicator plan (name, data source, who measures, frequency, per indicator kind), and the measurement values themselves as numeric cells with units and a comment column that appends historical-year values.

Modules 4 (analysis) and 5 (report layout) are computed by the workbook itself: the IER template has zero named ranges targeting those sheets — they are 100% formula-driven from Modules 1–3. Open the downloaded .xlsm in Excel, click »Enable Content« once, and the workbook renders the full analysis and final report automatically from the values we wrote.

Implementation note: the official-template exporter operates on the IER template as a binary, writing each captured answer to the named range defined in the workbook (Deležnik_1, Opis_problema1, Aktivnost_1_1, etc.). VBA macros are round-tripped untouched. See docs/EXCEL-PARITY.md in the repository for the full implementation breakdown.

10. References

Primary sources for the IER Model V5.3:

Slovenian legal and institutional context:

11. Further reading

12. FAQ

Is this an official IER tool?
No. The IER Model V5.3 methodology is public and freely usable; this tool applies that methodology with a different user interface. We do not claim IER endorsement.
Can I use this export for compulsory IER reporting?
Yes. Step 5 offers two downloads: a clean reviewable .xlsx for stakeholders, and the official IER .xlsm template pre-filled from your answers, with macros and dropdowns preserved. For Module 1 we ship full named-range coverage; Modules 2–5 land in the next release. See section 9 for details.
Where is my data stored?
By default, only in your browser (localStorage). You can download a JSON file at any time. Optionally you can publish a public version of the report at a URL of the form impact.scaientist.eu/<your-org-slug>. Publishing is opt-in and revocable.
Does the tool change the methodology?
No. We preserve the modules, indicator catalogue (IRIS+), SDG mapping, reporting purposes, and Theory-of-Change structure verbatim. Only the input experience and the published report layout differ.
Who built this?
ScAIentist® d.o.o. — a Ljubljana-based product studio building impact-driven tools for researchers and educators. Our founder is a researcher at IER.

Got feedback, a citation we should add, or a workflow we should support? Reach us from the homepage or open an issue on the repository (link in the footer).