Reporting outcomes to the nth degree takes time, valuable “outcome” time. It costs valuable rainforest in paper audit trails. It costs wasted strategic thinking time, due to necessity for devoting time to the tedium of administration.

Also, imagine what it would be like if we were all pin-striped businessmen clones, who were interested only in numbers, numbers, numbers? What about if our social impact cannot be measured effectively by numbers (as yet)? What if we are unaware of the social impact we are creating? What if our reported numbers are just codswallop and the outcomes would have occurred anyway?

I advocate the following - TRUST. The majority of people who are interested in social enterprise are trustworthy. Yes, the majority. There are many sharks and charlatans, but the majority are people of high integrity, doing their utmost to help people in the best way they can. Let’s trust them to do what they do best, whilst we also encourage them to hone their existing measurement systems and help them rebuild them, if they are broken. Let people who care, care. let people who report, report.

Trust can be achieved in a variety of ways. Ashoka stands for trust and integrity. In my own project, young social entrepreneurs will be instilled with a need for integrity and high ethical standards. They will also be taught how to report to a good standard.

If a philanthropist is obsessed with getting an “outcome return” on his (usually his) investment, then let him pay for the work. If a philanthropist is interested in creating social change, let him or her research what is most effective - there’s plenty of choice out there and far more worthy causes than unworthy.

Like I said at the start, there is a shred of truth in what is said above, and most NGOs need to tighten up on their reporting a great deal, but don’t try to paint real people who care about real issues with pin stripes.