Social Value UK

Tag: members exchange

  • Announcing our monthly Members’ Coffee Morning sessions!

    Announcing our monthly Members’ Coffee Morning sessions!

    We are pleased to invite SVUK members from ALL sectors to our monthly Members’ Coffee Mornings, with the first session taking place on May 25th . It will be an informal kick back hour to give members an opportunity for our members to meet, chat and talk ‘all things social value’ with us and each other.

    The SVUK team will also update on goings on in the network and any events and activities members might be interested in getting involved in.  

    Our network promotes the Social Value Principles, with Principle 1: Involve Stakeholders, as the red thread running through all that we advocate for and all that we do.  Our members are at the heart of our movement, and engagement, collaboration and networking across the membership is what drives our movement forwards together.

    This first session will be for ALL sectors, however future sessions will focus on a different sector perspective, Public, Private and Civil – please look through the sessions and choose which one would work best for you.

    The sessions are as follows:

    We can’t wait to get involved in some important conversations and hope to see many of you there!

    The Social Value UK Team

  • Social Value Matters 2017

    Social Value Matters 2017

     

    Today Ben Carpenter, Operations Manager, Social Value UK shares updates from Social Value Matters 2017.

    On the 10th-11th April Social Value International (SVI) teamed up with Turkish member Koç University Social Impact Forum (KUSIF) to deliver their annual conference; “Social Value Matters” in Istanbul. This year the conference title Social Value Matters (SVM17) carried the tag line “More Than Ever”. The backdrop being a world with rising inequality and a collective feeling that we must all act now and quickly to reverse this trend. The conference had a distinct emphasis on Maximising Social Value and Amplifying Stakeholder Voices; empowering the views of the vulnerable – the very people that many of us are providing service or products for. How can we make sure that we are maximising the value we create for these people? I was delighted to see that these themes ran deeply through all the sessions I attended.

    This was the third SVI conference I have attended and each one leaves me feeling motivated and inspired. They bring together talented professionals from diverse spheres – united in their desire to see social impact information being used to inform decision making and make the world a better place. SVM17 was no exception; over 250 delegates came from over 25 countries representing the public sector, private sector, academia and civil society. Cross cutting these sectors there were investors, delivery organisations and advisors. Throw in the stunning setting of Koç University overlooking the banks of the Bosphorus and it’s a heady mix.

     “It’s great to have so many people from all over the world working together to improve the way in which managing impact can reduce inequality.”

    Jeremy Nicholls, CEO Social Value UK and Social Value International

    The format of Social Value Matters was extremely participatory – there were no lectures or ‘expert panels’, instead there was always several workshop options, interactive in their delivery and the majority of the conference consisted of small roundtable discussions. Plenary sessions were kept to a minimum with high quality keynote speeches to start both days and then delegates taking to the stage with an open mic session to reflect and summarise at the close of each day (with a live jazz sound-track too!). You can check out some conference highlights and the conversations attendees were having on social media on this STORIFY.

     

    What I personally learned from the conference?

    The one thing that struck me was that, we should all (regularly) take a step back and ask ourselves why we are collecting this information about social value in the first place? The answer is surely: “So that we can maximise the social value we create”. So, rather than focussing on the measurement of impact as an exercise in itself – and getting caught up in the complexities of ‘empirical evidence’ or ‘formative evaluation’ – we should focus on collecting the information we need to improve our products and services. Or, in the case of investors/governance; “Is that organisation collecting the information it needs to improve it’s products or services?”

    I have written before about an emerging shift from impact measurement to maximising impact. This conference reaffirmed that it is definitely time to stop nit-picking about methodologies or metrics. More important is creating an organisational culture of listening to stakeholders and responding which means designing services or products to meet their preferences. This involves all of the complex and geeky things we love to discuss and are necessary to practice (such as stakeholder involvement, valuation techniques, counterfactual, materiality) but doing it proportionately and with a clear raison d’etre: to maximise the social value of our activities.

    As our conversations shift more towards ‘managing impact’ and ‘maximising value’ there are more references to subjects such as ‘design thinking’, ‘social innovation’ and ‘customer profiling techniques’. These are exciting topics and practices – arguably more exciting than ‘measurement’ and ‘accounting’ (but ssshh don’t tell the accountants I said that!). The truth is, accountability and maximising value are two sides of the same coin; if you are being accountable to your stakeholders then you are relentlessly innovating to provide the best services for them. I can’t wait to bring in more experts from these fields to help develop our movement!

    What happens next, ACTIONS?

    • SVI will soon be publishing some write-ups of all workshops and roundtables, many of which have some clear actions for the community moving forward.
    • We will be analysing feedback from the conference that will give us a NPS and some qualitative data on what impact the conference has had on attendees!
    • SVI will be launching a campaign for maximising value, which was also a need highlighted by SVI’s annual survey
    • The turkish chapter of Social Value International was officially launched at the conference and we expect more national networks to emerge or continue to grow. If you would like to join a national network or form one please contact SVI.

    We hope all attendees and also people who couldn’t attend can stay in touch using Social Value International social media.

    Join the movement, by becoming a member today, and see you next year!

  • 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.

  • Members Exchange Series

    Members Exchange Series

    In November 2016 Social Value UK held the Social Value Members Exchange, an annual event where members of the community come together for round tables, presentations and collaboration. The morning was made up of lots of interesting and inspiring conversations that we think everyone can benefit from so we have put together a collection of discussion pieces by members for members. We hope you will enjoy reading the Members Exchange Series and share your feedback and thoughts with the wider community.

    In the weeks we will publish blogs on topics from governance to start up tips and everything in between, for the full series search by category “Member Exchange Series” on the blog. We hope to get some community wide conversations started with these blogs so please let us know what you think in the comments or on social media with #svmembersblogs. As always, we look forward to your thoughts!

    You can find out about upcoming Social Value UK events here and if you want to contribute a blog, please get in touch.
    Spread the word: @socialvalueuk – #svmembersblogs

    Members Exchange Series