Local Livelihoods provides Social Audit training, from online introductory sessions to accredited Level 3 courses, and carry out Social Audits; from assisting social enterprises establish appropriate degrees of Social Audit systems to undertaking full Social Audits.
What is Social Audit?Social Audit is a way social enterprises can plan and measure their commercial, social and environmental objectives in a way that is rigorous, participative and useful to the organisation.
The Social Audit is a four stage cycle that provides organisations with the means to set up their governance statement and value base, plan their social and commercial objectives, engage with internal and external stakeholders in soliciting their views and feedback, and to measure progress against the quantitative and qualitative indicators developed as part of the planning process.
The cycle can be used as an integral part of the general management of the organisation, can be undertaken annually or over longer periods of time, and can be internally managed and/or supported by external evaluators. It is suggested that organisations incrementally introduce it over a number of years, building the capacity over time to make the Social Audit useful as a democratic and customised planning and measuring tool.
Local Livelihoods has recently prepared the 4th Edition of the Social Audit Toolkit which is available as a free download from the website.