Social Value UK

Tag: members exchange series

  • Social Value and Procurement

    Social Value and Procurement

    This is a guest blog by organisational members HACT on social value and procurement. This is part of the Member Exchange Series. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

     

    HACT launches toolkit

    Housing associations have long been committed to improving the communities they work in, providing opportunities for residents in the form of employment, training, skills and broader health and wellbeing activity. As community investment budgets are increasingly scrutinised, housing providers will look to core activities to drive social value. Procurement is central to this, but established models – heavily reliant on apprenticeships – are unsuitable for all contracts, nor are housing associations satisfied that the social value promised at tender stage is monitored or measured to validate delivery. Likewise, contractors committed to delivering social value are often uncertain what housing providers wanted – how is ‘social value’ defined, and what outcomes are of most interest?

    To address this, the Social Value and Procurement toolkit was created by HACT, supported by Trowers & Hamlins LLP and echelon Consultancy Ltd. To ensure the final guidance responded to challenges and answered critical questions, we convened a working group of housing providers and supply chain organisations (Affinity Sutton, North Hertfordshire Homes, Riverside, Thrive, Wandle, Mulalley, AkzoNobel, United Living, Wates and the Northern Housing Consortium). This vanguard supported and shaped the development of the toolkit, ensuring it was relevant, practical and easily applicable.

    The toolkit provides end-to-end guidance for both housing providers and contractors on how to most effectively and efficiently generate social value through the procurement process, alongside legal guidance and a plethora of practical tools, from example wording for tenders and contracts to templates and checklists.

     

    What next?

    With the toolkit now published, what’s next? There are four areas we’ll be focusing on:

    First, and testament to the toolkit’s usefulness, beyond the original supporters a good number of further organisations have adopted it: Catalyst, Circle (now part of Clarion Group), Fusion 21, Genesis, Liverpool Mutual homes, mhs Homes, Places for People, Viridian, Keepmoat and Mitie.

    Second, HACT is delighted to have these organisations on board and we are continuing to promote the role of procurement in generating social value. HACT staff have taken part in a number of events recently, and we were delighted to be invited to speak with members of Social Value UK at the 2016 Social Value Members Exchange. Additionally, HACT has hosted a series of well attended masterclasses for contractors and housing providers, which will continue in 2017.

    Third, although much of the previous engagement on social value and procurement has been around repairs and maintenance, following publication there has been significant interest in applying the toolkit to a wider range of goods and services. Further, a number of exciting discussions are underway, exploring opportunities for implementing the toolkit beyond housing. These avenues of further work offer great potential to begin firmly embedding social value across a range of housing and non-housing procurements.

    Lastly, over the next year HACT will continue working with organisations, individually and collectively, promoting the importance of effectively delivering social value through procurement, providing packages of support to unlock the full potential for social value generation.

     

    Want more information? Contact rob.allen@hact.org.uk or william.howard@hact.org.uk.

  • Social Value – A nice-to-have or building blocks?

    Social Value – A nice-to-have or building blocks?

    This is a guest blog by member Emma Back on social value in start-ups. This is part of the Member Exchange Series. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

    It is a rare event for Day One of operation for a new charity or social enterprise to coincide with Day One of its social value strategy. The much more common scenario is for consideration of social value to be piecemeal and sporadic, like writing about it for a funding application or while at a workshop. Many people I’ve met who are starting social ventures don’t even know what it is and for those who do know, the motivation to measure and to analyse impact is low priority – a nice-to-have but a non-essential. This is understandable – resources are very tight and ‘the impact of social impact’ is not immediately visible if you’re still in the early stages of your venture.

    At the Social Value Members Exchange in November, I heard a lot of stories about organisations which had increased their income, designed new services and deepened their impact purely as a result of paying attention to social value. It’s still too easy for these stories to be lost or ignored by emerging ventures. However, I believe social value is a powerful strategic and operational toolkit which creates its biggest influence while ideas and services are still taking shape – early stage companies and charities are missing out.

    I’ve noticed in my online and offline tours of social enterprise start-up resources that social value information is always cordoned off into a separate section (“so now that we’ve considered your business plan, your competition, your finances and your customers, let’s talk about social value”). This feels wrong and off-putting. The various tools and stages of social value fit very naturally into the chronology of starting a business. Instead of being its own thing, with its own set of separate, intensive resource requirements sitting on top of the normal tasks involved in setting up a business or charity, what if we ask the question, how can social value slot into the normal activities of a start-up?

    Here are some conversation starters:

    Social value as business model

    Of course, the theory of change plays a starring role here. Designing mission and goals using the theory as your framework has, in my experience, been the most succinct way of pinning down just exactly what I want the service to do and to achieve. It is a short-cut to creating a results-oriented business plan which doesn’t waffle.

    Social value as motivator

    I’m right at the beginning of my business idea. This can be lonely and tough at times. My understanding of social value means I’m recognising stakeholder impact as it occurs even though the service hasn’t ‘started’ yet. I’ve moved from seeing the problem and my future solution to seeing what changes for people, whoever they are and whatever stage the business is at.

    Social value as quality management tool

    KPIs versus outcome indicators. Need I say more?! What’s lacking is a demonstration of how it can double up to serve existing certifications, for example, ISO9001 or Investors in People, or simply as your monitoring framework for funders. More usually, advice on your social value indicators focuses on sitting alongside a broader system, not integrating with it.

    Social value as service designer

    Has anyone else noticed the deep affinity between the world of service design and that of social value? Both use ‘Engage stakeholders’ as their core mantras and both have a predilection for mapping – for finding the hidden linkages between service goals, activities and real outcomes. By combining techniques from both, some very powerful stories can emerge.

    For example, we could combine customer journey / experience mapping with the theory of change and an outcomes value map. Take a look at the Intuit experience map and the smily faces – this reminds me of intermediate outcomes… Stick values onto these stages together with the numbers of customers who reach them and you get the start of an accessible SROI analysis – one which offers great visibility for improving the positives and minimising the negatives in your service.

    There are so many business elements where social value has something to offer (marketing, financial management, competition analysis etc). The difficulty start-ups face with social value is not to do with resources. It’s to do with the way the story of social value is being told at the moment. It’s still viewed as a bolt-on, an optional extra worth 5% of a commissioning exercise or an additional section in your business plan. It’s more work. But how wonderful would it be we could demonstrate a way for social value activities and tools to be woven into the natural activities of any new social enterprise or charity? Social Value Principles and methods could become the DNA of our future organisations, not the extra box on the form.


    This is part of the Members Exchange Series, for more information, see here.

  • Collaboration for SROI

    Collaboration for SROI

    This is a guest blog by member Lynn Sbaih on collaboration between smaller organisations. This is part of the Member Exchange Series. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

    In November 2016 I attended the Social Value Members Exchange by Social Value UK, whilst here I hosted a round table table on collaboration between smaller organisations on SROI’s and funding bids. This discussion came about as a result of a some of us exploring, at a regional meeting, how small community groups are attempting to use SROI to acquire funding. We identified that many community groups are keen to identify their group’s SROI, and how this can be articulated in terms of a financial value. This can then provide commissioners and other funders with evidence of why it is worth investing in them, as a group. However, a number of attendees also identified that arriving at and articulating a SROI value may become problematic, particularly if group members cannot provide detail of how they arrived at their identified SROI value.

    The round table discussion touched on some of these issues, and attendees were also able to share some of their insights into working with small community groups. Insights included: how small groups can and should seek funding; how groups can collect information to help tell ‘tell their story’; the value of ‘the story’ and the ways in which funders view social value. In particular, the role of the stakeholder was discussed, and how important stakeholders are in enabling a group to collect meaningful information that may help them articulate their value to funders. This then raised some questions about who are the stakeholders, for small groups, and how do they get to meet and talk with them. This was viewed as particularly problematic for those groups that spend most of their time delivering services to local people and communities. It was observed, that, for such groups, they may have little time or energy to consider the wider issues of achieving SROI and funding. This led to a discussion about how small groups could come together in a community collaboration, where they can use their combined skills and knowledge to identify and manage all the aspects of what is needed to recognise and articulate their social value to funders. This then raised the question of learning and training and how this can be made possible for small community group members.

    Overall, we had a comprehensive and wide ranging discussion, with a range of shared stories and experiences from Round Table attendees, about the challenges facing small community groups as they adopt SROI approaches. Many of our questions where not answered. However, I think we all left our round table with plenty to think about. What are your thoughts?

    This is part of the Members Exchange Series, for more information, see here.

  • The Kent Impact Model: measuring the impact of AgeUKs in Kent

    The Kent Impact Model: measuring the impact of AgeUKs in Kent

    This is a guest blog by organisational members Sinzer, on their work with members Aleron. This is a case study about impact management. This is part of the Member Exchange Series. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

     

    During the Social Value Members Exchange 2016 in Birmingham last November, Aleron and Sinzer jointly presented the Kent Impact model, an impact framework developed on the Sinzer software platform to help AgeUKs in Kent (part of AgeUK, the largest UK charity delivering services to the elderly) measure and manage the impact of their work, across their near 20 member organisations. Aleron, a social impact consultancy based in London, partnered with AgeUK Kent’s consortium early in 2015 to help the consortium change the way outcomes and impact were recorded across all members. In order to do this, Aleron helped AgeUKs in Kent draft a Theory of Change as well as data collection model, and piloted this in paper-based form.

    Using the Sinzer software platform

    A specific request of AgeUKs Kent however was to operationalize the model by means of an IT system, in order to make data collection and measurement more consistent, as well as access aggregation and benchmarking options. This need led Aleron and AgeUKs Kent to partner with Sinzer in early 2016, an Amsterdam based organisation offering software solutions for social impact measurement and management. Sinzer’s software platform can be used to develop bespoke impact frameworks, collect data via online surveys, view results in a dashboard and export impact reports.

    Currently, the Kent impact model has been “digitalized” on the Sinzer software platform and has been tested in a few training sessions. Staff and other users have been trained and instructions materials have been delivered. Front line staff in each one of AgeUKs Kent member organisations will soon start using Sinzer to collect data by surveying elderly people that visit the locations, over three measurement points in time. Collected data can be analysed on individual client level as well as per each AgeUKs Kent location by using Sinzer’s dynamic dashboard and ‘slice and dice’ functionalities. Moreover, data collected from all locations can be analysed and visualised in an aggregation dashboard, which can also be used to benchmark the different AgeUK’s locations.

    Lessons learnt

    The Kent Impact Model (KIM) provides AgeUKs Kent with a better understanding of clients and service delivery through more robust evidence, as well as providing the ability to show something tangible: not just a process change, but a mindset change supported by a specific software tool.

    Some of the immediate benefits include:

    • Real understanding of impact across the Network
    • Common guidelines/training standards
    • Having a county-wide view for the first time
    • Commissioners onboard
    • Data will feed into contract bids and research projects
    • Development process built consensus and started indirect conversations around service design and ‘what works’

    Next steps for KIM

    Recognizing that measuring impact is an iterative process, possible next steps for KIM could include:

    • Linking in control groups
    • Integration with CCG datasets, via NHS numbers
    • Data analytics capacity building
    • Introducing the tool to non-Kent AgeUK Networks and non-AgeUK organisations.

    Interested in learning more, or want to know what the KIM looks like in the Sinzer software? Download the case study here.

    Using software for standardisation and aggregation of impact data:

    Besides showcasing the Kent Impact Model during SVMX16, Sinzer also hosted a round-table on standardisation and aggregation of impact data. During this round-table Sinzer demonstrated an impact measurement template for Inclusive Businesses, which has recently been developed on the Sinzer software platform.

    The Sinzer software platform is an IT system that organisations can use to measure and manage social impact. The platform allows for the creation of standardised ‘impact templates’ for a certain sector or domain: ‘blueprints’ in which certain elements (e.g. indicators) are pre-filled. These templates can be used to measure the impact of multiple projects, programmes or organisations, thereby ensuring a consistent way of measuring. Moreover, projects or organisations using the same template can benchmark their data, as well as aggregated the data of all of these organisations to gain insight into the total impact of these organisations.

    Following a project Sinzer undertook for BoP Incubator last year, a Dutch organisation delivering business development services to businesses that operate in the Base of the Pyramid, Sinzer has now build on this work by developing a template to measure impact for Inclusive Businesses.

    The template includes indicators from IFC, IRIS, UN and other sources, and aims to provide a starting point for any organisation that is an Inclusive Business or invest in them. The emphasis here is on the word ‘starting point’. Recognisably, not all IBs are the same or operate in the same contexts, which means not all indicators can be standardised. When using a template in the Sinzer tool therefore, organisations can choose which template indicators are relevant (and delete the ones that aren’t), as well as add their own organisation or context specific ones to tailor the measurement to their situation.

    Want to learn more about the IB template, or templates and the Sinzer platform in general? Read the IB case study or contact Sinzer.

     

    This is part of the Members Exchange Series, for more information, see here.