In order to promote its Christian witness, an organisation could also consider the introduction of social accounting (otherwise known as triple bottom line accounting), an examination and presentation of the non-financial impact of the organisation’s activity. Social accounting takes on board the impact on a community and on the environment, measuring how well an organisation has met its objectives and providing information to improve its strategy and implementation going forwards. Traidcraft has produced social accounts since 1994, the first PLC in Britain to do so. The related category of Social Return on Investment looks at the financial impacts in areas that do not have a market value: it tries to include impacts on people who are often excluded from markets, giving marginalised people a say over resource allocation decisions, for example. SROI is part of the social accounting approach, and will place a monetary value on community or environmental impacts. The wider benefit of all this is that the value of an organisation’s work can be presented to the public and to stakeholders in a clear and rigorous way.
Lee’s clear-sighted analysis of the evolving framework in which social enterprises can operate suggests a wider application of these principles could be extended to ecclesiastical institutions.
At the time of writing this research, none of the main established churches in Britain explicitly practises social accounting, nor do they encourage individual churches to use the same metrics and corporate priorities. Faith-based businesses have tested these principles in the crucible of the marketplace and found them to be sound, and instrumental in embedding a non-financial set of values in their management structures. If there are any lessons that church managers can take from faith-based businesses, this innovation could be the most transformative of them all.
APPENDIX 1:
Academic Departments Studying Faith And Business
The Susanna Wesley Foundation for Ministry, Management & Organisation, set up at Southlands College, Roehampton University in 2014
Faith in Business, Ridley Hall theological college, Cambridge
http://www.ridley.cam.ac.uk/centres/faith-in-business
The director Richard Higginson is also founder editor of Faith in Business Quarterly Journal and also linked to:
Transforming Business, a research and development project on Christian and entrepreneurial solutions to building social capital (ie tackling poverty)
http://www.transformingbusiness.net
Modem, an ecumenical hub to connect leadership, management and ministry
http://www.modem-uk.org
Quakers & Business Group
https://qandb.org
The Center for the Study of Religion is part of Princeton University, New Jersey. Of particular relevance is its Faith & Work Initiative
http://www.princeton.edu/faithandwork/
Walton College, which is part of the University of Arkansas, has a unit called the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace, which mainly looks at personal attributes of individual managers in relation to their faith, rather than considering the distinct category of faith-based businesses as a whole.