Social Value UK

Tag: Social outcomes valuation

Arabic Translation of Guide to SROI

The Arabic translation of the Social Return on Investment (SROI) Guide is up! Completed as a partnership between Social Value International and Sustainable Square, the translation aims to serve as a guiding reference for Arab practitioners to further promote the concept of calculating social value within the region.

“It’s fantastic that The Guide to SROI is now available in Arabic. We have seen increased interest in this area over the last couple of years and this will really help people engage. I would especially like to thank Eric and his team for all their work getting this out.”
Jeremy Nicholls, CEO, Social Value

“Based on our interactions with organizations in the Middle East over the last 3 years, we have seen increasing appetite for having tools that can help monitor, evaluate and
measure the impact of their contributions to the society. Producing the Arabic version of the SROI guideline will help spreading the practice amongst Arabic speakers, players that
are designing and managing programs in developing communities.”
Monaem Ben Lellahom, Global Founding Partner, Sustainable Square.

Organisations within the region are continuing to shift from the Ad-hoc approach towards CSR practices to strategic design of programs to optimise value. However, the region still has room to grow in the monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the programs and in sharing resources in order to grow the social sector. Considering social impact and understanding what really changes in an initiative, is still a new technical approach for organisations to formally embrace. With the newly translated text, we look forward to seeing more Arab practitioners integrating SROI into their monitoring and evaluations, developing localised case practices relevant to the region, and promote the concepts of social investment and social value.

Download Guide in Arabic

Press Contacts

Fatima Alattar
falattar@sustainablesquare.com

02/11/2017
Is your workplace a fair place to work?

THE fairplace Award® COMES TO SOCIAL VALUE UK

What effect does the management of your workplace have on you, your colleagues and on all the other people in the building–including contractors’ staff you may never see? What positive contribution does your workplace make to the local community and the planet? What does your workplace say about your company’s values and ethics? So is your workplace a fair place to work?

Newest Social Value UK organisational member the Ethical Property Foundation is a registered UK charity dedicated to promoting its vision that buildings should be managed for the benefit of people and planet, not just profit.The Foundation’s accreditation the fairplace Award® has been developed in partnership with the property industry, civil society and CSR profession. It is a rigorous transformational process which evidences an organisation’s commitment to people in the workplace, the community outside its front doors and the environment, in a single comprehensive measure of excellence. Each Award lasts 3 years, assessed by top property professionals and providing recommendations for improvement.

The fairplace Award® is also a great business improvement tool, because it brings together colleagues from across the business, gathering evidence and sharing ideas. Current award-holders include the workplaces of RICS, Sodexo, RBS, EMCOR UK and leading aid charity CAFOD.

“ It’s a tranformatonal process, Fairplace is the opposite of a box ticking exercise – to gain the award you need to look carefully at actual on the ground practices, not just policies. We have all learned a lot at RBS. We’d recommend any business to go for fairplace.”
Mike Lynch, Sustainable Workplaces department at RBS

Now for the good news. The Ethical Property Foundation is offering a 25% reduction on fairplace Award® licence fees to all current Social Value UK member and associates who apply for their work place before 1 July 2018.

The Ethical Property Foundation is delighted to be part of Social Value UK and wants to hear from you – kindred spirits who already understand the power and potential of social value for your business. The fairplace process helps you capture how you create this in your workplace – and indeed by encouraging your suppliers to apply for fairplace too, you can ensure they are also offering their people a fair place to work. More good news is that all fairplace income is ploughed back into the Foundation’s charitable work: supplying free property education and advice to local small voluntary groups. To date the Ethical Property Foundation has supported 3500+ organisations and is currently sole referral partner to the Charity Commission for land & property advice.

So, put your workplace ethics to the test and apply for your fairplace Award® today! For more information contact mail@ethicalproperty.org.uk. Full details on the website www.fairplaceaward.com

Press Contacts

Ethical Property Foundation

mail@ethicalproperty.org.u

Social Value UK

Christina Berry-Moorcroft, Membership and Communications Coordinator, Social Value UK

E: christina.moorcroft@sv-test.wp-support.team T: 0151 703 9229

About Ethical Property Foundation

The Foundation works specifically to empower charities and community groups to make the most of the property they occupy and manage, and to improve the environmental and social performance of the commercial property sector. The Foundation is part of the wider Ethical Property Family which includes the Ethical Property Company and Ethical Property Europe. The Ethical Property family is committed to making the best use of property for society and the environment. We work to define what Ethical Property means, to demonstrate it in action and inspire others to put it into practice.

About Social Value UK

Social Value UK is the national network for anyone interested in social value and social impact. We work with our members to increase the accounting, measuring and maximising of social value from the perspective of those affected by an organisation’s activities, through our Social Value Principles. We believe in a world where a broader definition of value will change decision making and ultimately decrease inequality and environmental degradation. To achieve our mission, Social Value UK provides training and assurance services, as well as hosting regular meetings and events, creating new tools and resources, and running campaigns. Through supporting and working with our members, and as a National Member Network of Social Value International, we are creating an international movement for change.

28/06/2017
£500,000 awarded as part of Impact Management Programme
The Impact Management Programme announces the first grantees of its Impact for Growth strand. Eleven charities and social enterprises will receive grants totalling almost £500,000 to improve their impact management systems and processes. Grantees will work with an approved provider who will support the project and help embed impact management into the organisation. This pilot grant round will be followed by approximately 30 more grants to be distributed from January 2018.

The Impact Management Project (ran by a cohort of organisations, including Social Value UK) announces today the eleven organisations, based across England and delivering a number of different services, that will receive almost £500,000 in grant funding through the Impact for Growth strand. This supports charities and social enterprises that are seeking to raise investments or contracts to improve their ability to quantify, report on, increase and ‘get paid for’ their impact.

The first grantees and the providers they are working with (in parentheses) are:
- Mencap Liverpool (Eastside Primetimers)
- YMCA North Tyneside (Helmepark)
- Empire Fighting Chance (Good Economy Partnership)
- Chiltern Rangers CIC (Eastside Primetimers)
- Speakers Trust Ltd (CAN Invest)
- Action West London (Aleron)
- London Irish Centre (Aleron)
- Noise Solution Ltd (Measuring + Managing the Good: Volunteering Matters, Coalition for Efficiency and DataKind UK)
- Dementia Care (ATQ Consultants)
- Murray Hall Community Trust (Cogent Ventures)
- Legacy School Sport CIC (Pulse Regeneration)
77 organisations who attended the pre-application impact management training were eligible to apply for a grant at this pilot stage and 30 submitted applications. This was shortlisted to 20 by our grant administration partner Social Investment Business and then the final decisions were made by our Investment & Commissioning Panel, chaired by Rob Abercrombie.

“We were impressed with the range of applications we received and appreciate the engagement we have had from both the social organisations and the support providers they are working with. It was clear from the applications that charities and social enterprises are operating in a tough environment, so it is more important than ever to support organisations to achieve a positive impact and access the funding they need to do this effectively. We are excited to see how these funded projects develop and what it tells us about the link between improved impact management and securing an investment or contract. Our grantees will be encouraged to share their experiences and we will publish our learning for the benefit of the whole sector too.”
Rob Abercrombie, Director of Research & Consulting at NPC

This pilot grant round will be followed by approximately 30 more grants to be distributed from January 2018. To apply, eligible charities and social enterprises must first attend a free one day impact management training session. These session will be held September to November 2017 and full details will be available on the programme website soon. We are also currently recruiting further providers to be involved and the deadline for provider applications is midday 30 June 2017.
16/06/2017
Capturing All Voices in Impact Assessment
This is a guest blog by member Clare Hammond on her social value work with The Yard Scotland. Clare works for Rocket Science UK Ltd. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

We have been working with The Yard Scotland and their community since June 2016. The Yard provides safe play spaces and respite for young people with disabilities and their families. During our time with The Yard, we conducted a Social Return on Investment and Cost Benefit Analysis to be able to evidence and quantify the impact their service has on families and how much they save other service providers such as the Local Authority.

For Rocket Science, the voice of the service user should be present, loud and clear, and the central driving force for any impact analysis. Social researchers the world around can talk to you about sampling sizes, interview techniques, and running a great focus group to get that voice. However, social impact research gets slightly more complicated when service users are less able to engage with the more traditional research processes.

Engaging extensively with The Yard’s young people and families as part of this research has been very important to both Rocket Science and The Yard Scotland. To do this we have had to use less conventional methods of social research – and we have learnt a few things along the way: We’ve learnt a few things along the way about how to approach impact analysis using less conventional methods:
- Co-design with The Yard of all research activities was vital. As consultants, we brought expertise in evaluation disciplines, analytical processes and robustness. However, it’s The Yard that knows its client group inside and out. Bringing together this expertise was vitally important, particularly in designing and delivering the research activities with their young adventurers.
- Abandoning the traditional – for the young adventurers we knew we couldn’t use traditional research techniques. Instead we embraced what made The Yard so great – play! We kept it simple– we had two questions we needed answering. Then we developed a range of play activities that young people could engage with…ever conducted an interview on a go-kart? It’s exhilarating.
- Understanding the impact of the service on families was much harder than we expected. Parents and families of these young adventurers are so used to constantly being the advocate for their child. They are some of the most selfless people we have engaged with. For our research – getting parents to think about themselves was difficult. We overcame this in two ways:
1. We needed to make it clear to parents that this was a space for them to talk about themselves as well as their children. Using colourful post-it notes we put all messages relating to their children on one wall, and messages relating to themselves as individuals on another wall. As expected, the wall of messages about their children filled up fast, while their own wall remained largely empty. We then set them the challenge of filling their wall to be as colourful as the wall about their children. Highlighting their selflessness visually, and colourfully proved to be very effective.
2. Once again, we embraced The Yard’s motto – fun! We needed to convert outcomes such as friendship and relaxation into monetary values. We chose to use Choice Modelling – which, I promise, is as dull as it sounds if done with no humour. So with fun, laughter and a joke or two we had groups of parents and carers giving us their honest views of what was important to them as individuals as well as their family.
Our time with The Yard has been rewarding, enlightening and a lot of fun. There aren’t many researchers that get to say they got to play with paints, bikes and swings for work! The Yard are now armed with robust evidence of their impact to use with the policy makers and funders. With this information, they intend to influence the design of services and expand their services further across Scotland.

For more information on Social Value, and the Social Value Principles see here.
02/05/2017
Impact Management – A Matter for the Board!

This is a guest blog by member Jim Brooks, Director of Cogent Ventures on why impact management and social value maximisation needs to be addressed by the board. This is part of the Member Exchange Series. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Imagine this scenario:

You are the Chair of a charity or social business discussing next years annual cycle of business with other board members. It’s a full on cycle so you suggest that finance should be removed from the monthly agenda to free up time. This is done on the basis that we all know how important financial performance is and anyway, we have all the right policies and procedures in place in any case. You would probably get some odd looks and comments such as “you’re kidding right?”. Most would actually be thinking that its time to get a new Chair because this current one has lost the plot. In short, everyone knows how important financial governance is and quite rightly it has a place as a regular item on the agenda.

So why, I ask, is it perfectly ok for impact management not to be a standing agenda item for boards. Surely we can’t rely on the same “we all know how important it is” argument, can we? But this is exactly what i do hear when talking with people from the social enterprise and charity sector! Whats more as I increasingly raise the subject I tend to get answers such as. “impact is implied, its why we are here” or “impact in our DNA” or even “we report outcomes in the annual report”. However, most people I talk to quickly realise that of course impact management should be on the agenda and then together we ponder why the heck it is not.

Let me be clear

Let me be clear about what having impact on the board agenda means. I’m talking about impact strategy, impact reporting and impact performance improvement, in that order. Firstly, the board should be involved in setting the impact strategy, by which I mean the development of the theory of change that leads to the outcomes for beneficiaries and other stakeholders. This way the board are fully attuned to what it is that the organisation does and how this leads to social impact. Once targets have been set the board should review performance against the targets and clearly this needs to happen regularly, in the same way that management accounts are reviewed by the board. Finally, and possibly most importantly, the board then have an opportunity to engage with the management team in impact performance improvement, whether that be to address poor impact performance or to learn from good performance.

Think about why you won’t be taking finance off the agenda and then apply the same arguments to impact

None of the above means that having impact management as a regular item needs to be an onerous task and it may not always require a great deal of time. On the occasions where impact strategy is discussed and agreed it may be a fairly lengthy agenda item, similarly when performance improvement is being discussed. There will, however, be times through the year where the slot could be helpfully used for hearing impact related case studies for example. These sessions are likely to take less time but are just as important as they ensure board members remain grounded in the work that the organisation does.

It will, of course, be for individual chairs reading this to decide if impact needs to be a stand alone agenda item as opposed to being inherent in other standing items. To these people I say think about why you won’t be taking finance off the agenda and then apply the same arguments to impact.

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

16/01/2017
Valuation Resources

In September 2015, Social Value International teamed up with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to bring together 22 valuation experts from around the world for 3 days at the Bellagio Center. The event was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and focused on the valuation of social outcomes.

The aim of the meeting was to take advantage of the full range of experience from different sectors and geographies to discuss how different valuation techniques relate to one another, how they can be mapped and how we can create a shared consensus around this growing and important area.

By way of preparation for the event, we collated a set of documents, reports, publications and resources that cover a range of approaches to the valuation of social outcomes, with a focus on examples of valuation from the private sector. We’ve produced a guide, with links to the downloaded version or webpages of each resource.

You can download the guide here.

Many thanks to the attendees of the Valuing the Things that Matter meeting for contributing their ideas.

Have we missed something? If you can think of any other documents that could be of use, please email us with your suggestions or comments at members@sv-test.wp-support.team.

16/12/2015
Social Value International and WBCSD convene global meeting on the valuation of social outcomes

On the 21st September, Social Value International (SVI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) convened a global meeting for experts in valuation of social outcomes. Taking place in the Bellagio Center on Lake Como and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the meeting brought together 22 individuals from a range of sectors and countries to discuss how a variety of valuation techniques relate to each other and can be mapped and brought together with clearer guidance.

The meeting, entitled Valuing the Things that Matter, is part of a growing interest in the valuation of social outcomes. A crucial part of sustainability and impact reporting, valuation is the way in which different outcomes can be measured using the same scale. This process then means that choosing between different options or ways of doing things is more transparent and accountable. Most of the time, the valuation of outcomes is done using ‘gut instinct’, which results in non-transparent and incomparable judgements being made.

Derived from welfare economics, social research, statistical analysis and SROI, the valuation of social outcomes is a mixture of existing and new approaches.

Delegates brought expertise from around the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Canada, Singapore and India. Sectors represented included academia, philanthropic foundations, the UK Cabinet Office, accounting and financial consultants, multinational corporations and small social enterprises.

Over the three day meeting, delegates discussed the way that valuation techniques map onto each other, the relationship between valuation and audience and purpose, a way of selecting an approach and the assurance of valuations.

Jeremy Nicholls, CEO of Social Value International, said “this meeting has been a fantastic opportunity to bring a wide variety of expertise into one room to talk about this fascinating – and crucial – question of how to value social outcomes. We believe that this valuation process will be a key part of changing the way that organisations can be held to account. Everyone values things intuitively and on an everyday basis; making this process transparent will help organisations to increase the value that they create.”

Kitrhona Cerri, Manager of the WBCSD’s Redefining Value project, said “the conversations and discussions that have taken place over this week have been an incredibly useful way to develop our understanding of valuing social outcomes. For an area which has so much cross over between different sectors and has huge global implications, the chance to gain insights and agreement from a group of people with such diversity of backgrounds and expertise will go a long way towards improving and focusing our understanding.”

09/10/2015