This study aims to examine how nonprofit and civil society initiatives create measurable public value when responding to unmet social needs in the context of institutional ambiguity.
Focusing on “Spin Time,” a civic welfare hub in Rome developed within an abandoned public building, the authors integrate Faulkner and Kaufman’s public value framework with social return on investment methodology. Drawing on knowledge translation theory, the authors analyze how measurement practices function as translation mechanisms that render community-generated value legible to institutional actors, while examining the tensions inherent in this translation process.
Spin Time delivers multidimensional outcomes in housing, education, health and inclusion, despite operating outside formal governance arrangements. The case illustrates hybrid forms of collaboration and adaptive governance, showing how measurement tools can mediate between community legitimacy and institutional recognition.
Theoretically, this study contributes to nonprofit management scholarship by conceptualizing public value measurement as a knowledge translation process operating within contested governance spaces, demonstrating how such translation both empowers grassroots organizations and creates risks of “measurement capture.” The authors further show how strategic resource dependency may serve a value preservation function in civil society initiatives, contrary to conventional assumptions regarding organizational autonomy. This study’s central theoretical contribution is the reconceptualization of public value measurement as a knowledge translation process. Two interrelated arguments support this core claim: first, that such translation simultaneously empowers grassroots organizations and creates risks of measurement capture; second, that strategic resource dependency may serve a value preservation function, contrary to conventional assumptions of organizational autonomy
