A team of recent graduates clinched the annual Outstanding Undergraduate Research Prize for their final year project Samsui: Social Return on Investment.
Samsui is a social enterprise subsidiary of Soup Restaurant which provides meals to nursing homes. The management team was looking for better ways to measure their social impact.
Consisting of our young alumni Dingyan Khoo, Gerald Koh Chee Hean, Damien Lam Wai Cheong, and Dehn See Toh Wei Jie, the team built a framework which calculates the ratio of social value created to the investment cost incurred. They were supervised by Senior Lecturer Zhang Weina from the Department of Finance. Associate Professor Ruth Tan joined the team later as a co-author of the case study.
Thanks to the team’s work, Samsui’s management is now able to evaluate their impact, and can even forecast future social impact if they were to expand their operations. Samsui is also looking to adopt the framework to measure the effectiveness of its various social initiatives.