SAN in Australia
In August 2008, John Pearce came along to a small workshop with food-based community enterprises from different parts of Australia. At the workshop John made a big impact talking about how we don't think twice about keeping financial accounts, but generally don't have a systematic way of tracking what's probably far more important to community and social enterprises --- our social impact and progress. John's words kept going round in the minds of a few of us from the University of Newcastle (in Australia) and from two community enterprises in Newcastle, Fig Tree Community Garden and The Beanstalk Organic Food. In July 2009, we secured two third-year students who were doing a project management and placement course to work with Fig Tree and Beanstalk to devise a social accounting system that would work for these two small, volunteer-based community enterprises.
Out of the students' project a practical guide to doing social accounting in small community organisations and community enterprises has been put together.
The guide is based on three overarching steps:
- Scoping - identifying key elements of an organisation or enterprise
- Accounting - designing and conducting a social accounting system
- Reporting and Responding - reporting back to stakeholders and responding to the findings.
The guide takes users through the thinking that needs to occur at each step in order to design a simple social accounting system that will work for small, volunteer based organisations and enterprises. The guide includes examples of the surveys and other tools initially tested with Fig Tree and Beanstalk.
The guide is being further "road-tested" with Fig Tree and Beanstalk and the intention is to update the guide based on this ongoing work.
The guide can be downloaded free of charge from
For more information contact Jenny.Cameron@newcastle.edu.au