Nowadays there is a wide range of socio-economic problems, which require prompt decisions and mitigation of consequences of their existence; therefore, social innovation as a tool of state social policy becomes very important. Due to the limited resources, the need to improve the efficiency of budget spending the bodies of state power and administration can not succeed in solving the problems on their own. Therefore, it is necessary to develop public-private partnership when implementing social innovation projects and programs. In connection with the growing interest in social innovation as a tool for mitigating inequality, development and implementation of heterogeneous social innovation projects and programs, there is a need in their analysis and evaluation. The article proposes a method of comparative analysis of social innovation projects by means of quantitative and qualitative indicators, thereby creating the preconditions for the evaluation of social innovations with a greater degree of objectivity. It substantiates the necessity to refer to the subjective assessments of target audience of the specific social innovation project by means of interviews with direct participants of the project. The author developed an index, which helps compare specific social innovation projects and programs and monitor the adjustment dynamics of already implemented social innovation projects. During the index development the author took into account the following criteria for innovative social projects and programs: a degree of novelty of the project; a degree of diffusion of the project results; novelty and relevance of the project; practical significance of the project; a team’s qualification and a level of the social innovation project (program) implementation; a scale of the project introduction; a scale of possible implementation of the project results; demand for project continuation; satisfaction with participation in the project; socio-psychological climate of the target audience; social cohesion and synergies
Keywords
social innovation, social innovation evaluation method, criteria for social innovation evaluation, social innovation projects, social innovation programs