Case Study · SmartStart South Africa
The 3.3x SROI that existed in the data for a decade.
Auxeira found it in six weeks.
SmartStart South Africa had been running one of the continent's most effective ECD franchise models since 2015. The economic evidence for its impact had never been assembled. Auxeira built it, and the result became the foundation for a $2M Skoll Award.
The brief
A decade of impact. No economic case.
SmartStart had built something rare: a social franchise model that trained and supported community-based ECD practitioners at scale across South Africa. By 2025, the programme had reached over 152,000 children and generated measurable economic activity across 14,740 enterprises in its value chain. The monitoring data existed. The annual reports existed. The impact was real.
What did not exist was the economic evidence. No SROI had been calculated. No fiscal multiplier had been modelled. No caregiver workforce contribution had been quantified. When SmartStart approached major funders and government co-investment conversations, the evidence gap was the limiting factor. The programme was ready for scale. The evidence was not ready for Treasury.
SmartStart commissioned Auxeira to close that gap. The brief: synthesise a decade of programme data, calculate a defensible SROI, and produce an impact report that could anchor the next phase of institutional funding conversations. Timeline: six weeks.
The methodology
Econometric rigour. Six weeks.
Auxeira applied a multi-method evidence synthesis approach built on three disciplines: longitudinal data analysis, SROI calculation using HACT/SROI Network standards, and the Auxeira Evidence Index for qualitative synthesis at scale.
The quantitative work involved econometric modelling of programme outcomes across the full 2015 to 2025 dataset, regression analysis to isolate programme attribution, and counterfactual economic analysis to establish what would not have happened without SmartStart. Caregiver workforce participation was modelled as an economic contribution, not just a programme output. Fiscal savings to government were quantified using cost-per-outcome benchmarks from comparable public sector delivery.
The qualitative work used the Auxeira Evidence Index: 49 stakeholder interviews coded across a thematic framework, producing 207 indexed quotes that formed the narrative architecture of the report. This is not standard interview synthesis. It is a structured evidence retrieval system that makes qualitative data citable and auditable.
Key findings
What the data showed.
The Skoll Award
Evidence that travels to the highest rooms.
In 2026, SmartStart South Africa received the Skoll Award for Social Innovation, a $2M recognition from the Skoll Foundation, the highest honour in global social entrepreneurship. The award recognised SmartStart's decade of impact in early childhood development across South Africa.
The Auxeira 10-year impact report was the evidence foundation for that nomination. The 3.3x SROI, the fiscal savings quantification, the caregiver economic contribution analysis: these were not decorative additions to a strong programme. They were the economic case that made SmartStart's impact legible to a global funder audience that requires fiscal evidence before it commits at scale.
The Skoll Award positions SmartStart for government co-investment conversations at a level that was not previously accessible. The evidence architecture Auxeira built is now the platform for that next phase. This is what impact evaluation ECD work looks like when it is done at the level of economic evidence, not just programme monitoring.
What this means for your organisation
The SmartStart situation is not unique.
Across South Africa's ECD, education foundation, and social franchise sector, the pattern repeats: strong programmes, real impact, and an evidence base that stops at monitoring data. The SROI exists in the numbers. The fiscal multiplier is there. The caregiver economic contribution is real. It has simply never been assembled into the language that moves Treasury, unlocks co-investment, and positions organisations for the next phase of scale.
Auxeira's evidence synthesis methodology, the same approach applied to SmartStart, is available to organisations with five or more years of programme data and a funding conversation that requires economic evidence. The work takes six to fourteen weeks. The output is a citable, auditable economic case that travels into rooms that monitoring reports cannot reach.
If your organisation has built something real and the evidence has not caught up with the impact, that is the gap Auxeira closes.
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