COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF A SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCY
MINDS is a social service agency serving people with intellectual disabilities and their families to improve their quality of life. One of the key initiatives at MINDS is the day activity centres at different locations across Singapore. The students were asked to prepare an impact report for the day activity centres for MINDS. These centres are expensive to run and government subsidies are often insufficient. MINDS wants to compute a cost-benefit analysis to share the social return on investment with the Ministry of Social and Family Development.
The key learning objective from this project was for students to get to know a real social service agency (MINDS) and the challenges involved with impact evaluation when it comes to such agencies. It was hoped that the report they prepared as part of the project would have a real impact on the funding and operations of MINDS.
The students had access to data collected through a survey. In addition, they had access to the MINDS team to answer questions about the activities of MINDS. The availability of the survey before the project helped the students focus on the research and analysis of the data. In addition, students were able to compare the data to a Meso (an impact measurement tool) study that was conducted by MINDS for one of their centres. All this background provided data for the students to prepare their final reports. The multiple discussions with the MINDS were particularly helpful to frame the problem statement for the students.
By the end of the course, students produced a report that had the following:
- Introduction to MINDS, its activities and its stakeholders
- Impact Assessment Model supported by quantitative and qualitative evidence
- Insights and recommendations for the activities at the Yishun Centre and compare with MESO study
The students were split in 7 groups and presented their findings independently as each group. This allowed for a diverse and critical evaluation of the impact assessment model. While the survey data was made available to the students, they also used secondary data to support models such as Quality of Life, Good Analyst Model, Financial Confidence which helped combine the baseline surveys, exit interviews, and secondary data.
The insights and recommendations were useful for the partner MINDS, to use as input while evaluating the activities of the Yishun Day Care Centre.
“Working with Prof Madhav, Swapnil, and the students from SMU-X was a great joy, and it has brought about new insights on the programmes in our day activity centres. As we start to increase the level of activity along with the cooling of COVID measures, the students' recommendations were taken into consideration, and MINDS has adopted SROI as an internal measure to continue evaluating the effectiveness of our programmes. As we continue working with SMU-X, we hope to find innovative ways to enhance the quality of life of the persons with intellectual disabilities we serve.”
– Julia Ng, Manager, Programme Development & Support Office, MINDS
“MINDS is a premier social service agency working in the intellectual disabilities space in Singapore. Collaborating with them gave us a sense of the kind of challenges that they face. The project gave the students an opportunity to apply what they learn in the classroom to help solve real world problems for this agency. Sometimes as an academic, the work we do feels somewhat removed from the “real world”. Working on projects like this with an organization like MINDS is a great opportunity to venture outside of that barrier and apply an academic skillset to real world problems.”
– Associate Professor Madhav S. Aney and Adjunct Teaching Mentor Swapnil Mishra
“I enjoyed the Economics Development in Asia SMU-X project immensely. Not only did it give me an opportunity to work with like-minded peers with diverse strengths, I was able to utilise my econometrics skills to be able to contribute to the communities MINDS serves. Being able to apply the lessons taught in the classroom made the module incredibly meaningful and memorable, and I am grateful that SMU-X offers such opportunities to work with industry partners that pose interesting practical challenges to students.”
– Bharat Gangwani, Student of ECON118 class