Strengthening SROI Practice in Brazil
Celebrating Daniel Barretti’s SVI Level 2 Accreditation, a milestone for IDIS and the region.
Continuous learning and professional development remain central to strengthening social value practice globally. That is why Social Value International is proud to celebrate the milestone alongside IDIS, one of its network members and a leading force in the application of SROI in Brazil.
Daniel Barretti, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at IDIS, has become only the second person in Brazil to achieve Level 2: Social Value Practitioner status, joining Paula Fabiani, CEO of IDIS, the country’s first.
In this interview, Daniel reflects on his accreditation journey, the realities of applying SROI in the Brazilian context, and what it takes to make social value practice more rigorous, participatory and meaningful.
Q: Congratulations on achieving your Level 2: Social Value Practitioner certification! What does this milestone mean to you, and how does it feel to be only the second person in Brazil to reach this level?
“Obtaining L2 accreditation from SVI represents another step in a journey of continuous learning. For me, it means that my practice in monitoring and evaluating social projects has been improving. As for the fact that I am only the second Brazilian to hold this accreditation, I think it reflects the pioneering and enduring nature of the accumulated experience of IDIS (the organization I belong to) in the SROI protocol.”
Q: As Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at IDIS, how does SROI fit into your day-to-day work, and what drew you to pursuing formal certification at this level?
“Our current CEO, Paula Fabiani, was the first Brazilian certified at SVI Level 3. This brought IDIS recognition and significant expertise in applying the protocol in Brazil. Since then, IDIS has carried out a series of SROI assessments and has become a national reference on the subject. That said, what motivated me to apply for SVI Level 2 was precisely the idea of continuing and updating our knowledge in applying SROI here in Brazil.”
Q: You described the certification process as challenging and highly enriching. Can you walk us through what it involved? What were the most technically demanding aspects for you?
“I believe that addressing the 8 principles of Social Value requires careful and rigorous attention to technical and practical details, as well as transparency and clarity in reporting processes and their respective results. Engaging and collecting impact perceptions from indirect beneficiaries is an example of a challenge, as is helping beneficiaries understand the difference between the attribution discount and the counterfactual. On the other hand, such difficulties reveal paths and possibilities for action and consequently lead us to improve our evaluations, making them increasingly participatory, accurate, and transparent.”
Q: As you say, SROI requires a rigorous approach to quantifying social value, from mapping stakeholders to monetising outcomes. What did the certification teach you about applying these principles in the Brazilian social sector specifically?
“Involving indirect beneficiaries is a major challenge, as they are often distant from the intervention and consequently have a low perception of the impact related to it. However, the accreditation process taught me that it is necessary, first, to identify and test possibilities for mobilization and engagement, and second, to collect the information in the best possible way, rather than failing to collect it altogether.
Most importantly, it taught me to clearly describe the limitations and risks of each data collection and respective results analysis process. From a monetization perspective, combining techniques such as the use of proxies and anchoring proves to be a powerful approach in terms of linking market value with the social perception of value. Even so, the accreditation process revealed to me that the monetization stage can be even more participatory by validating proxies with the beneficiary audience.”
Q: IDIS has applied SROI with organisations including Amigos do Bem, Instituto Ayrton Senna, Petrobras, and Vale. How has your hands-on project experience informed your approach to the certification, and vice versa?
“I submitted for accreditation an evaluation that we had recently carried out based on our prior experience with SROI. I understand that this prior experience helped me in many ways, but it also brought some ingrained habits of understanding and execution that were sometimes misguided. Thus, the accreditation process certainly served as an opportunity to critically reflect on and update our practices in greater alignment with the SVI principles.”
Q: Who were some of the key voices or collaborators that supported you on your journey to accreditation, and what did learning alongside others from different professional backgrounds bring to the experience?
“Well, today we are a large Monitoring and Evaluation team at IDIS, and we exchange a lot of ideas about our daily work practices. So, I would say that, to some extent, everyone on the team helped me through our meetings, debates, and reflections, even if they were not directly about my accreditation process. More directly, three people contributed greatly to this process: Ana Beatriz, who was the analyst most involved with me during the execution of the evaluation before I submitted it for accreditation; Denise Carvalho, Director of Monitoring and Evaluation at IDIS, who not only encouraged me but also helped me with the reflections and revisions I had to make during the accreditation process; and finally, Paula Fabiani, CEO of IDIS, who was the biggest motivator for me to pursue this accreditation process and not give up after the first attempt.”
Q: Social value measurement is still maturing as a discipline in Latin America. What do you see as the biggest barriers to wider social value and SROI adoption in Brazil, and what would you say to other practitioners considering certification?
“To begin with, I would say that we still face a barrier when it comes to impact evaluations in general. Many organizations that claim to evaluate impact are actually monitoring process or product indicators, such as the number of participants. Impact evaluations, like SROI evaluations, require human, technical, and financial resources that are often not anticipated when planning initiatives. Finally, I think that Brazil's large territorial size and consequently its great cultural and socioeconomic diversity create an even greater challenge regarding monetization. In Brazil, for example, we do not have an official proxy bank like the one in the United Kingdom, and I believe such an effort would not be feasible precisely because of the significant territorial differences within our country.
I highly recommend that other practitioners go through the certification process, as it enables them to reflect critically on their practices, on the best ways to adapt and conduct them within the Brazilian context, and finally because I believe it is a rich approach that blends qualitative and quantitative data and allows for a very insightful reading of social initiatives from the perspective of those who actually experience these initiatives in practice.”
Q: What's next for you? Are there areas of social value practice you're hoping to develop further, and what do you hope this achievement unlocks for IDIS and for the field?
“Certainly. Two lessons from my accreditation process that I really want to put into practice are: first, developing a more qualified and robust process for listening to and engaging indirect beneficiaries; and second, making the evaluation even more participatory by validating partial results, as well as the choice of proxies, with beneficiaries in addition to the organization implementing the initiative.”
Daniel’s journey to Level 2: Social Value Practitioner accreditation is a reminder that professional growth and critical reflection go hand in hand. Whilst the process of achieving the qualification can be challenging at times, it’s precisely that rigour which makes it worthwhile.
SVI congratulates Daniel on his achievement and looks forward to seeing the next chapter of IDIS’s contribution to social value practice in Brazil and beyond.
Develop your social value practice
If Daniel's journey has inspired you to deepen your own SROI knowledge, explore upcoming training and accreditation opportunities from across the SVI network.
