Assessing a College’s Economic and Social Impacts

The Situation

The New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) is an economic and social catalyst for the province, creating value for its primary stakeholders: students, communities, industry, governments, and taxpayers. NBCC wanted to quantify its current and future impacts, including ROI for government investment and labour market contributions.

Our Approach

Stiletto leveraged its proprietary model for measuring social impact and worked with NBCC to identify its Sustainable Development Goal priority areas. Stiletto developed evidence-based economic modelling to generate specific current and future social impacts.

The Results

The economic and social impact report has supported NBCC’s strategic implementation moving forward. NBCC has launched the assessment and has seen significant progress.

The ‘NBCC Economic Impact Report,’ released in 2021, clearly demonstrates the college’s multifaceted impacts and makes a strong, clear case for ongoing taxpayer investment. The college has incorporated various components and recommendations from the social impact assessment exercise into its corporate strategic plan with both short-term and long-term targets included.

We've previously engaged other companies to do economic impact studies, but they tended to use models that were more generic and focused on the past rather than forecasting. What we got from Stiletto provides a much richer demonstration of the impact we're creating now from both an economic and social perspective, as well as a forward-looking roadmap for how we can expand that impact. It'll help our funders and partners really understand the full value of an investment in NBCC as we seek their support for a number of major strategic initiatives. We've worked with Stiletto several times, and I always appreciate how actionable the final result is. Heather AllabyExecutive Director, Strategic and Integrated Engagement | New Brunswick Community College (NBCC)