Emma Tomkinson is a social impact analyst living and working in Perth, Australia. She is particularly interested in the role of impact measurement in evidence-based policy, including policy related to social investment. She created the Social Impact Bond Knowledge Box for the Centre for Social Impact Bonds at the UK Cabinet Office and also developed the social impact bond concept for application in New South Wales, Australia. She is currently establishing Community Insight Australia (see below) and consulting to organisations considering social impact bonds. Please get in touch to exchange ideas or leave a comment.

This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.

Emma tweets from @emma_tomkinson

Her linked in profile is here and should be up to date.

An interview of Emma by the Social Investment Laboratory in Portugal can be read here.

Emma is the founder of Community Insight Australia, a social enterprise that translates the UK software tool Community Insight for use with Australian communities. The tool collates and maps publicly available social data. It presents this data in a way that is easy to see and understand. The tool provides Australian social purpose organisations with the location-based information they need to tailor their services to local communities.

Emma works as a Senior Consultant for Impact Seed. Impact Seed is Western Australia’s peak market builder for impact investment and social enterprise development. Our role is market development on both supply and demand sides with government, not-for-profits, corporates, foundations and family offices through advisory, impact management and investment readiness support.

Publications

Everybody wins? A discourse analysis of competing stakeholder expectations in Social Impact Bonds, Jarrod Ormiston, Michael Moran, Erin I. Castellas & Emma Tomkinson, in Public Money & Management (40:3) 237-246, 2020.

Does Outcomes-Based Reporting Contribute to or Contradict the Realisation of Social Outcomes? (PDF, 0.5MB), Emma Tomkinson, in The Three Sector Solution, edited by John Butcher and  David Gilchrist, published by Australia New Zealand School of Government, 2016.

Outcome-based contracting for human services, Emma Tomkinson, a literature review for the journal Evidence Base, published by Australia New Zealand School of Government, 2016.

Risk and Return in Social Finance: ‘I Am The Market’, Alex Nicholls and Emma Tomkinson, in Social Finance, edited by Alex Nicholls, Rob Paton, and James Emerson, published by Oxford University Press, 2016.

The Sleeping Giant: A Social Return on Investment Report on Supply Nation Certified Suppliers. Robin Burton and Emma Tomkinson. Published by Supply Nation in Sydney, 2015.

Delivering the Promise of Social Outcomes: The Role of the Performance Analyst, Emma Tomkinson, published by The Social Investment Lab (Portugal), Impetus-PEF (UK) and Think Impact (Australia), 2015.

Factsheet: Understanding Charity Impact, with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) and feedback via linked in here.

Social Impact Bonds in the UK, Emma Tomkinson, first published in the Charity Finance Yearbook 2014

The Peterborough Pilot Social Impact Bond: A Case Study, Alex Nicholls and Emma Tomkinson, Said Business School, Oxford University 2013

Social Impact Bonds: An Australian Snapshot, Emma Tomkinson, Centre for Social Impact 2012

A User’s Guide to Australian Charity Data, Emma Tomkinson, Centre for Social Impact 2012

Building the Case for Better Evidence, Emma Tomkinson and Claudine Lyons, Public Administration Today 2012

Talented and gifted perceptions of the learning environment: A Rasch analysis, Stephen Humphry and Emma Tomkinson, in Robert F. Cavanagh and Russell F. Waugh (Eds.), Application of Rasch Measurement in Learning Environments Research. Sense Publishers 2011.

Media 

Implications of UK Report on Social Investment, Pro Bono News, 8 April 2015 (in response to the report of the Alternative Commission on Social Investment)

Show Your Workings on Impact Investment, The Mandarin, 3 October 2014 (On unit costs and fallacies in the SIBs argument in the G8 Social Impact Investment report)

Social Impact Investing – Whose Market is This Anyway? Pro Bono News, 18 September 2014 (On the lack of inclusion of social purpose organisations and their perspective in SOCAP2014 and the G8 Social Impact Investment report)

Charities Voice Overwhelming Opposition to ACNC Repeal Bill Pro Bono News, 13 May 2014 (An analysis of the submissions to the senate enquiry into the repeal of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission)

Random

Emma’s book Cooking up Times Tables (2000) – biscuit recipes encoded in multiplication tables and fractions – can be purchased here.

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