Social Value UK

Tag: Non-For-Profit

  • The Seven Principles of Maximising Social Value

    The Seven Principles of Maximising Social Value

    This month we published a new report “The Seven Principles of Social Value, and why they are important for accountability and maximising social value”, that is available for free on our online resource library.

    Social Value is the value that stakeholders experience through changes in their lives. Some, but not all of this value is captured in market prices.

    The Principles of Social Value provide the basic building blocks for anyone who wants to make decisions that take this wider definition of value into account, in order to increase equality, improve well being and increase environmental sustainability. They are generally accepted social accounting principles.

    The Principles are not individually remarkable; they have been drawn from principles underlying social accounting and audit, sustainability reporting, cost benefit analysis, financial accounting, and evaluation practice. There are other guides available on the process of measuring and reporting social value and impact that also refer to principles, such as the Social Investment Taskforce Guidelines for Good Impact Practice. However, the Principles of Social Value can be distinguished by their focus on what underpins an account of social value, and on the questions that need to be addressed so that the information can be used to better inform decisions.

    The Principles were originally developed in 2009 and were updated in 2015 following the merger of the SROI Network and the Social Impact Analysts Association. This new report from Social Value UK explains the thinking that underpins these Principles.

    Please read the report here and let us know what you think in the comments section.

  • New SROI Case Study: SROI in Brazil

    New SROI Case Study: SROI in Brazil

    SROI can be used to measure and manage value in many different countries on a variety of different projects. We spoke to Eduarda Penido Dalla Vecchia, Director of FLUPP, a nonprofit foundation from Brazil, to find out how they have used SROI to learn more about what difference they’re making.

    Below are a few excerpts from the case study.

    Why are you using SROI and how did you go about it?

    Our central programme is VIM (Valorizando uma Infância Melhor, or ‘Enhancing Early Childhood’). The aim of VIM is to engage with families, teachers, local communities and authorities to better meet children’s pre-school developmental needs, and ultimately help young children to achieve more later on in life.

    We’ve been working closely with another organisation, IDIS (Instituto para o Desenvolvimento de Investimento Social, or Institute for the Development of Social Investment) to help us plan and set goals for VIM. From the outset, IDIS told us that it was important to invest money in measuring and recording impact data. After all – to evaluate is to assign value to something. If you believe in the value of a project, you should want to value its impact.

    Although we found VIM a successful project, we wanted to be absolutely sure about its benefits for the community, especially for the children. By using a renowned methodology (SROI) we wanted to show our Board that we were investing correctly.

    In the end, we believed that VIM had achieved its objectives, but the SROI showed us that these objectives have been surpassed. It was very important to share this information with the communities, and as a result they felt more and more empowered.

    Has SROI been useful? Have you changed anything as a result of SROI?

    As we were about to start a second version of VIM in a different region, the results were very useful. We were able to learn from what we did previously and work on adjustments and improvements to increase our impact. One of the changes we made was to decrease the amount that we invested on infrastructure in the second version of VIM. We decided to do this because the SROI results indicated that infrastructure had less of a direct improvement on children’s development, so the money would be better invested elsewhere.

    With the SROI results in hand it’s also easier to talk to people that emphasise numbers and/or need more than subjective inputs to  understand and engage with our project.

    In some communities it was also important to show that even though we have tough teachers (because of different reasons like political disagreements or resistance to change), there are huge benefits to the project, and it is very important that it continues.

    Our full collection of case studies can be viewed here.

  • B Lab partners with Social Value International to help companies measure and improve their impact

    B Lab partners with Social Value International to help companies measure and improve their impact

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    Today, B Lab and Social Value International announced a co-ordinated effort to help companies improve how they measure and assess their accountability, transparency and socialand environmental performance. This partnership brings together two of the biggest organisations in impact measurement in a joint effort to encourage all companies to measure their impact with as much rigor as they do their profits.

    B Lab is the nonprofit serving the B Corp Movement, a global movement of people using business as a force for good so that one day all companies compete not only to be best in the world, but best for the world. The B Corp Movement is creating and spreading tools for all businesses and investors to measure and improve their impact. These tools provide common, comprehensive, and transparent standards that allow for independent verification and external reporting. The B Impact Assessment platform is a free, online, easy-to-use educational and management tool already utilized by 30,000 businesses globally to assess, compare, and improve their impact.

    Social Value International is an international membership network that campaigns for change in the way that society accounts for value. Using their Seven Principles of Social Value, they help organisations account for what value is destroyed and created through their activities. Social Value International has over 1000 members in over 40 countries and has produced a Guide to Social Return on Investment, now translated into 8 different languages, to help organizations to apply these Principles.

    The affiliation between B Lab and Social Value International will provide a more comprehensive service to companies interested in becoming more accountable and transparent. The B Impact Assessment provides organizations with a standardized, comprehensive, educational tool to measure and manage their company’s social and environmental performance, whilst Social Value International provides organisations with a way to measure how much value they are creating or destroying by valuing and analysing their positive and negative outcomes. This affiliation helps companies gain a complete understanding of their impact both in depth and breadth.

    Jeremy Nicholls, CEO of Social Value International says ‘this partnership is a further step towards providing companies with a more coherent and complete offering as to how they can become more accountable and transparent for their activities, whilst maintaining a competitive edge. We hope that this collaboration will make it easier for companies to limit their negative impacts whilst increasing their positive impacts, at a time when the need to do so becomes ever more pressing.’

    Bart Houlahan, Co-Founder of B Lab, says ‘Social Value International is a leader in the impact measurement movement, and we are very excited to be working more closely with them to encourage companies to commit themselves to impact measurement and accountability, inform our own methodology with leading best practices, and expand the scope of the B Impact Assessment and B Corp Certification globally.’

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    Press contacts

    Helen Campbell, Communications and Membership Coordinator, Social Value International

    E: helen.campbell@socialvalueint.org           T: +44 (0)151 703 9229

     

    About Social Value International

    Social Value International is the global network focused on Social Impact and Social Value.

    Social Value International works with our members to embed core principles for social value measurement and analysis, to refine and share practice, and to build a powerful movement of like-minded people to influence policy.

    We support, connect, and represent our members through training, knowledge-sharing and networking.

    www.socialvalueint.org

     

    About B Lab

    B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of People Using Business as a Force for Good. Its vision is that one day all companies will compete to be Best for the World and as a result society enjoys a shared and durable prosperity.

    B Lab drives this systemic change through a number of interrelated initiatives: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and good marketing; 2) promoting usage of Mission Aligned corporate structures to increase efficacy of social entrepreneurship and impact investing (more than 2,000 benefit corporations have been registered in the 27 states and District of Columbia that have passed benefit corporation laws); 3) promoting Measure What Matters campaigns to increase use of free, powerful tools for businesses to measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance (more than 20,000 businesses use B Lab’s free B Impact Assessment). 4) developing B Analytics, a customizable platform to help investors and institutions measure, benchmark, and report on the impact of the businesses with whom they work and in whom they invest. For more information, visit www.bcorporation.net, www.bimpactassessment.net, www.b-analytics.net and www.benefitcorp.net.