A reference directory of impact valuation methods and their primary public sources.
This directory maps the main published methods funders use to value social impact, with the unit each works in, the decision it was built for, and a one-line account of what it does well. There are many more funders who use impact valuation models but they are not (yet) listed due to their methodologies remaining private.
If you have comments, corrections, or additions to this directory, please email spencer@socialreturnadvisory.com
Explicit expected-value reasoning under deep uncertainty that lets very different causes sit on one page.
Transparent cross-cause research aimed at individual givers and pre-selected funds.
Fully published spreadsheet models give a clean audit trail back to inputs, and the method is built to test whether a grant clears a funding bar. Estimates are anchored in randomized and quasi-experimental evidence.
Methods built to value early-stage or high-risk bets, where strong evidence is scarce and expected return and risk adjustment do more of the work.
A single comparable unit that places health, income, and education on one scale without converting to dollars, with explicit probability-of-success adjustment for early-stage bets.
A defensible portfolio floor that concedes you cannot evaluate every grant and still bounds the whole.
USAID was shut down in 2025, but in 2026 was re-launched as an independent fund, DIV Fund.
Translates impact into an investment-native multiple investors can set beside financial return.
Methods that value impact through the income or earnings it generates. Fast and legible to a finance audience, and blind to value that does not show up in earnings.
Transparent income-based ROI with public models, including a relative-income option (DIL) that compares gains fairly across regions of different income levels.
The author of this list, Spencer MacColl, is the former Chief Impact Officer of GitLab Foundation and created GitLab Foundation's impact models.
A simple income ROI model a program officer can run in a spreadsheet, with data demands that flex by grantee stage to stay accessible to early-stage organizations.
Methods in the cost-benefit and social return family, which convert non-market outcomes to money to buy cross-sector comparability.
A stakeholder-driven account that monetizes outcomes other methods ignore, built on seven published principles and an independent assurance pathway.
A novel and powerful wellbeing-equivalent unit with an explicit additivity adjustment for counterfactual reasoning.
A pioneering, fully monetized benefit-cost system whose published equations cite their sources and discount each benefit by a counterfactual factor.
An applied SROI practice for smallholder coffee programs that holds a fixed 10-year horizon and 10% discount rate across projects for comparability and concentrates on income effects to stay tractable where data is thin.
Grades valuation to the strength of the evidence, monetizing outcomes only when a causal design on the Maryland scale supports it, and draws on Denmark's national registers for precise income measurement.
Methods that keep value in a wellbeing unit rather than money, anchored in self-reported life satisfaction.
Anchors value in people's own reported wellbeing rather than income or expert weights.
Frameworks that structure or assure impact management rather than producing a comparable number.
A shared language of What, Who, How Much, Contribution, and Risk that travels across asset classes without forcing aggregation.
A board- and LP-credible standard with an assurance pathway.
Multi-criteria methods that combine evidence with explicit value criteria, used mostly in development program evaluation.
A structured value-for-money lens that combines evidence with explicit value criteria, well suited to complex programs that resist a single comparable figure.
The UK government's binding appraisal standard, built on social cost-benefit analysis but reaching a balanced value-for-money judgement that weighs non-monetary costs and benefits, distribution, and risk alongside the monetized figure. Published rules for discounting and optimism bias, and mandatory practitioner training, keep its public-value advice defensible to Treasury and auditors.
HM Treasury published a shorter 2026 edition after its 2025 review, with an independent discount-rate review due to report in 2026.
Methods that report cost per unit of a single outcome. Clarifying inside one sector, and silent across sectors because the denominators differ.