The Website

1. What do I do on the socialmarkets website?
2. What is a "case", "project", "listing", and "market"?
3. Why am I having trouble logging in to the socialmarkets website?
4. What is a social capital marketplace?
   
5. What's the difference between socialmarkets and the other non-profit/charity evaluator websites like Charity Navigator and GuideStar?
6. What is an "alpha release"?
7. How do I search for listings?

Donations

1. How do I give money to a non-profit organization / charity through the socialmarkets website?
2. I notice socialmarkets always tries to add two charges to my donation.  What are they? Do I have to pay them?
3. Who are the people I'm trying to help? Do they really need help?
4. Are there refunds?
5. Is there a minimum donation amount?
6. How do I know that my donation has really been transferred to the non-profit organization / charity I specified?
7. Is there an audit trail?

Outcomes

1. So what do I get for my donation? What is a social return on investment (SROI)?
2. How do you calculate social return on investment (SROI) for a listing?
3. What are outcomes indicators?
4. How do I know these outcomes indicators are any good? What about "creaming"?
5. How will socialmarkets report the outcomes to me?

Miscellaneous

1. What is the Leaderboard for?
2. What is the history of “social return on investment” (SROI)?
3. Why shouldn't I give my money directly to the non-profit organization / charity?
4. Can I donate to non-profit organizations located outside the United States through the socialmarkets website?

Why am I having trouble logging in to the socialmarkets website?
If this is your first time on the socialmarkets website, you may not have completed the registration process.  To register, please fill in this form:  http://about.socialmarkets.org/users/new .  We will send you an activation email to the email address you provide. To complete your registration, click the hyperlink in the activation email.  If you cannot find the activation email in your inbox, please check your spam email folder. If you still cannot find it, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

What's the difference between socialmarkets and the other non-profit evaluator sites like Charity Navigator and GuideStar?

Those other websites use the financial data that all charities must report to the U.S. government (on IRS Form 990). This data alone is not enough to evaluate non-profit organizations adequately, since it may reveal what the charities spend, but not what they do.  socialmarkets is different because we actually ask non-profits to share both their measurable goals and how good they have been at meeting them.  This is the only way to clearly see whether a charity is reaching its goals.  It's also the only way to show how a charity's seemingly high expenses can explain an even higher level of accomplishment.

What is a “social capital marketplace”?
 “Social capital”, as we use it, refers to money used for a social goal such as saving the environment or ending hunger. Grants from foundations and the U.S. government as well as your donations are forms of “social capital”. There are billions of dollars of social capital spent every year in the US. Unfortunately, we don’t always know whether the money is well-spent. That’s because non-profits don’t usually have the means to report what happened. With socialmarkets, non-profits learn that you need to know more details about how your donation is spent.  In return, they will give you what we call an “outcomes report” that details what happened.

The socialmarkets website is currently in “alpha release.”  This means that the website is in an early phase of development and design. It’s still rough around the edges.  The alpha release is a “proof of concept”. It’s a rough model to express the basic idea of our social capital marketplace, even if some of the website’s functions and features don’t work yet. We want to demonstrate that a social capital marketplace is both constructive and possible. The next phase of the website, the “beta release,” will include a lot of these changes.  The beta release is closer to being finalized. The “gold release” is the final phase That’s when website development and design have been completed. 

A donations box is listed along with each project or case. Enter the amount you want to donate in the box under where it says "I want to give". If you do not wish to add extra charges, just uncheck the check boxes and your donation amounts will change accordingly.

I notice socialmarkets always tries to add two charges to my donation.  What are they? Do I have to pay them?
You do not have to pay anything above the original donation amount you specify.  These two charges are optional and explained below:

15% for the non-profit: Your original donation amount goes to the non-profit organization / charity as a "restricted grant." This means your donation can only be used to cover the costs associated with the specific listing you donated to (e.g., your money will be directed towards providing the services to the clients as specified in the listing; you are restricting the purpose of the funds).  However, this additional 15% charge would also go to the non-profit, but they decide how to use the additional “unrestricted” funds (e.g., for rent, utilities, other overhead costs, tracking project outcomes, staff training, fundraising, etc.).

10% for socialmarkets: This is socialmarkets’ commission for keeping this website running.  socialmarkets is itself a non-profit organization, so donations to us are also tax-deductible.

Who are the people I'm trying to help? Do they really need help?

Non-profit organizations / charities are working with all the cases and projects posted on the socialmarkets website. They check whether the person (client) is really in need of help through a thorough process of documentation gathering and background checking. For example, for the Eviction Prevention market, the documentation includes a copy of the eviction notice. 

Are there refunds?

We only accept donations via Google Checkout. Refunds automatically occur when a listing is not fully funded in time. You'll get an email from us as to what is happening and why. Your money will then be refunded to the credit card used for the donation.

If, for any reason, you would like a refund, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Is there a minimum donation amount?

There is no minimum donation, but we suggest a donation amount of $25 or more.

How do I know that my donation has really been transferred to the non-profit organization / charity I specified?

Transferring money to the specified non-profit organization/charity may take up to two weeks from when you make the donation. Once you have donated via a credit card on Google Checkout, that money passes through the accounts of our fiscal sponsor, GivingNet. GivingNet then sends a check to the non-profit whose listing is now fully funded. A listing is fully funded when donors have supplied the total amount of money the non-profit needs to begin providing services for that listing.  If the listing is not fully funded, you will not receive an outcomes report from the non-profit. However, the money will still be sent to the non-profit.

When the non-profit deposits the check and receives the funds, the non-profit's program manager associated with that project/case is notified. The program manager accesses the socialmarkets website and manually changes the status of the listing from "Fully Funded" to "In Progress". Once a listing has been fully funded, the non-profit can begin providing services for the case/project, as indicated by its “In Progress” status.

Is there an audit trail?
Yes, there will be an audit trail in the beta release of socialmarkets. This means that there will be documentation stating that the non-profit certifies that the outcomes really are what they report. In the current alpha release, the audit functions are handled manually by socialmarkets. We personally contact these non-profit organizations all the time, and monitor the auditing process. This is the alpha release so we're still testing how the audit functions.

So what do I get for my donation? What is a social return on investment (SROI)?

We believe that good charity websites should always help non-profit organizations produce great results. To help donors understand these outcomes, we condense them into a single number in dollars that we call the social return on investment (SROI). A high SROI on a donation means that the nonprofit was successful at reaching the goals/outcomes they specified in their listing.  This indicates that your donation helped to benefit society.  SROI is a way of assigning a dollar value to that societal benefit.

For example, suppose you donate $100 to an eviction prevention program that will help keep one family in New York City from being evicted from their apartment for 12 months. We know that the SROI for such a case is $36,000, which is how much it would have cost New York City to house this family in temporary housing for  12 months if they had been evicted. Assuming that it cost $4000 to prevent the eviction, your return would be calculated as follows:

Not bad for a 900% social return on your donation! 

How do you calculate social return on investment (SROI) for a listing?

To calculate social return on investment (SROI), we use baseline data (i.e., information on how the clients were doing before they received help / services), outcomes indicators, the percentage change in outcomes above the baseline after receiving services (i.e., how much the clients improved after receiving assistance, as compared to before), and our confidence in the quality of the outcome information we received. We sum up the SROI’s for all of your donations (your “portfolio” of listings) in your socialmarkets account, and we call that amount "SROI". However, we’re not stopping there. We don’t believe we have all the answers.

We’re introducing a way for members of socialmarkets to change the SROI.  We think that if we got everyone’s guess as to what the SROI for a listing was, we’d end up with an even more accurate SROI.

What are outcomes indicators?
An outcome is a desired result for a program.  For example, with youth tutoring, a desired outcome may be improved academic achievement.

An outcome indicator is a way of measuring and tracking a given outcome.  Indicators measure performance numerically.  For example, for measuring improved academic achievement, a possible indicator would be the percentage of students who improved their test scores.  These outcome indicators are how we track the amount of social good that a non-profit organization / charity creates. These indicators form the basis for your social dollar return on the website. High donor performance (efficiency) based on good social return on investment may even get you on the socialmarkets Leaderboard. 

How do I know these outcomes indicators are any good? What about "creaming"?
We are asking all our participating non-profit organizations to certify that the outcomes they report are actually did happen. However, a common criticism of outcome measurement is that charities practice "creaming".

Creaming is the practice of selecting “better” participants for a program so that the program’s performance appears to be better than other similar programs. For example, a youth tutoring program may measure its performance based on improvement in test scores.  As a result, the program may decide only to admit into the program stronger students who are more likely to improve their test scores, and leave weak students out.  By “creaming,” the percentage of students who improve their test scores will be higher without the poorly performing students.

In the future, we plan to encourage our member non-profits to avoid creaming through randomization of their program participants (e.g., choosing program participants at random from a large pool instead of picking them based on specific criteria). 

What is the Leaderboard for?
The best socialmarkets donors are listed on the Leaderboard.  Donors are rated by their overall social return on investment for all the donations they have made through socialmarkets.  In other words, donors are ranked based on how many social dollars their donations produce. A donor's ranking on the Leaderboard is not determined by whether that donor is giving away a lot of money, but whether the donor got a large social return on investment (SROI) on that money.

What is the history of “social return on investment” (SROI)?
The concept of “social return on investment” (SROI) was developed in 2000 by Jed Emerson at REDF. Although SROI is more closely connected to economic analysis, we adapted SROI slightly to a Web context. You'll see further developments of our use of SROI in future releases of socialmarkets.

Why shouldn't I give my money directly to the non-profit organization / charity?
Of course, you can give your money directly to any non-profit organization on our website. Our website offers a hyperlink to the website of each non-profit organization listed on our site.

However, if you donate to the non-profit directly and not through the socialmarkets website, you will not receive an outcomes report from us for that non-profit. Also, we cannot track the social dollars for the donations you make to them.

We think it’s a better idea to aggregate your money with other donors on socialmarkets. It ensures that the project can get funded directly and that non-profits understand that there is a market for the kind of listing that they’re promoting. It helps to create a virtuous circle between the non-profit and the donor community.

Can I donate to non-profit organizations located outside the United States through the socialmarkets website?
Currently, we are focusing on the United States so you cannot donate to non-profits located outside the U.S. through the socialmarkets website.  However, with enough funding, socialmarkets has plans to expand outside of the U.S., so please check back.