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Measuring social impact has become a major topic in the debate about financing social innovation. Several key reports on this issue have been published. These recent works all employ the Management by Results (MBR) model, also called the ‘theory of change’, and thus present a new construct for the problematic relationship of causality and measuring its evidence. Based on an institutionalist approach of social innovation, this article exposes the shortcomings of MBR in evaluating social innovations and highlights that other ways are possible. The authors suggest putting social aspirations at the centre of the evaluation process.