Whatimpact is a social value management expert company offering expert advice to match the public and private sectors with local social value initiatives and deliver evidence-based impact reporting. It supports organisations throughout the UK, with social value planning and social value delivery to meet tender-specific goals. Whatimpact prides itself on helping organisations deliver tangible, locally relevant, and contract-specific social value effectively and efficiently.
Their excellent resources have been uploaded to our Resource Library:
Social Value Manager White Paper 2023, sponsored by HACT, researches the world of social value professionals, their backgrounds, workloads, goals and challenges and how we can support them to succeed. A really welcomed, recommended good read.
The Social Value Handbook: How to Manage & Budget Your Social Value is also a good recommended read. It sets out how to develop and implement a social value strategy and harness company resources with contract profitability in mind, how to coordinate a social value cycle, the challenge of different frameworks, how to report and budget for social value and more. A must read for SMEs and larger businesses.
A few weeks ago, I joined fellow social value leaders in Leeds for a ‘no holds barred’ discussion about the world of social value.
Following (and prior to) that, there has been much action going on behind the scenes to drive an ambitious agenda for positive change.
Since Autumn of last year when I became sole CEO – and with our new Board in place – I’ve been building relationships with many passionate individuals and organisations both inside and outside of our SVUK community. Many of these are at the forefront of both this agenda and other, linked initiatives.
I’ll be inviting some of them to speak to our SVUK Board, Advisory Board and staff team in the coming weeks to hear more about what the evolving demands of the market are.
This is a part of our continuous effort to be responsive in ways that align with our Vision, Mission, Values, Strategic Objectives and The Eight Principles.
As always, we are listening to all sectors at all levels and are now setting up formal processes for participation. If you think you’d like to help in a practical way (methods yet to be decided), please get in touch via this JotForm.
Following the announcement last week of the passing of the Special Resolution at the EGM (details here), as Co-Chairs, Fran and I wanted to share some thoughts with members.
We are delighted that this Special Resolution has been passed. It marks a significant moment as we come together as a body. We share a passion to see it become common place for organisations to make decisions that are informed by their social impacts. We share a passion to help to demystify the mystifying world of social value.
We don’t know when the decision will be made by Companies House to inform us that we are able to change the name of SVUK to ‘The Institute for Social Value’. However, we now have an opportunity to ask the questions which remain, of which we know there are many, should the name change be accepted.
As a board, we take our responsibility seriously and will use this time to ask some fundamental questions about what the name change means to the way we operate. Isabelle and the team have done a lot of hard work behind the scenes to start this process and we will give them every bit of support we can to delve more deeply into the reality of what this means.
We are passionate about creating impact and as a group represent a diverse range of organisations and opinions. This helps us to provide solid support and a wide range of opinions to the SVUK team.
We see that this is a fantastic opportunity to unite people and organisations around this important and ever growing topic, to provide structure, guidance, parameters, leadership and a strong independent voice.
We look forward to conversations around this as a board and with members/ non-members in coming months and hope we are able to bring news of the decision soon.
Social Value UK are proud to announce that three team members at CEDAR have achieved Level 1 Social Value Associate Status. Congratulations to Megan Dale, Susan O’Connell and Kathleen Withers.
CEDAR is a combined NHS-academic research organisation which sits within both Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (UHB) and Cardiff University. This collaborative structure provides CEDAR with access to NHS-based clinical experts and patient groups, as well as internationally recognised academic researchers. CEDAR is staffed by a highly experienced and multi-disciplinary team of both NHS and Cardiff University employees.
Ahead of this announcement, we spoke to CEDAR about their experience with the assessment process…
Why did you embark on the SVI Professional Pathway?
We recognise that some healthcare interventions create values that are not easily quantified in other evaluation methods. SROI is becoming more recognised in health care, and likely to be increasingly important to our work with the Welsh Value in Health Centre (WViHC) where we support evaluations of projects across Wales.
What elements of the assessment were particularly useful to your learning?
It was good to refresh and formalise our thinking around social value techniques and methods.
The assessment gives external reassurance that our skills and knowledge meet a standard and increases our confidence that we have developed an understanding of the principles and how they apply in a broader context. This gives confidence to funding bodies and collaborators.
Being part of a team who have completed several SROIs meant we could discuss our ideas and understanding when preparing for the assessment, and had experience of applying the methods.
How do you plan to utilise your newly acquired Level 1 Associate practitioner skills?
We will continue to work with other organisational members such as Public Health Wales to develop the use of SROI methods for healthcare settings.
We will evaluate new projects for suitability, and encourage SROI as a method where it is the best fit, as well as advising on appropriate data collection for future SROI.
We will plan to share these skills within the wider team as well as continuing to develop skills further by putting them into practice across a broad range of projects.
Are there any specific projects or activities you are doing at the moment that are related to SROI/social value?
We have previously worked on evaluations for Long COVID Rehabilitation Services in Cardiff and Vale and Cwm Taf Morgannwg and Platfform, a mental health and wellbeing service for children and young people in Gwent. We are currently developing an SROI for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board Rehabilitation Model focusing on services to support people with chronic hip, knee and back pain, and also for pre-habilitation support prior to joint surgery.
“We have been excited to meet others embedded in the NHS who are using Social Value methods to identify and report on the value of healthcare, as identified by those who are most impacted by it. We look forward to participating in the development of more robust methods that are tailored to healthcare, and enhancing the understanding of social return on investment in this area.”
