In the last 10 years or so, numerous organisations have been set up to provide toolkits and offer support and advice on producing social impact reports. The Social Value Act (SVA) 2012 was like an injection of steroids into the sector and we now probably have more organisations offering consultancy and information than we can usefully make sense of.
For many organisations seeking to report on their social purpose there is now a bewildering array of options to choose from – making it difficult to see the wood for the trees. The SVA and recent procurement policy guidance requires organisations to demonstrate their social value as well as reporting on their financial capability.
What many people probably don’t realize is that the antecedents for reporting on social value and social impact stretch back to the 1970s when the term ‘social audit’ was first used. Social Audit Limited was a company formed at that time to consider using ‘social audit’ to outline the effects of large factory closure on local communities.
‘Social auditing’ was then further developed by Freer Spreckley and his pioneering work with Beechwood College in Yorkshire in the 1980s, producing the first social audit toolkit. In the late 1980s the Community Business Movement in Scotland extended this work to community enterprises – John Pearce and Alan Kay amongst the prime movers in this work – leading to the establishment of the Social Audit Network (SAN).
The 1980s was Thatcher’s decade, and the idea of demonstrating social value was counter to the strict Conservative Party policy of financialising pretty much everything. A great deal of experimental work was carried out in Scotland between 1980 and 2003 when the Social Audit Network was officially launched; seeking to demonstrate that it isn’t just money that matters.
I recently attended the Social Value UK (SVUK) Members Exchange meeting in Birmingham (November 2016), where there were representatives from practitioner and social impact reporting services organisations.
I participated in a round table discussion of about 12 people at the meeting exploring how the information produced for the quality assurance and management of organisations could be integrated into social impact reports.
We know that some community and social enterprises already provide data to meet the requirements of quality assurance/management bodies such as PQASSO, European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), Investors in People & the Matrix Standard. A number of them use the SAN Social Accounting and Audit (SAA) framework and included this data into their social accounts.
We also know that some organisations using the SAN framework include Social Return on Investment (SROI) type analysis on some part of their activities – most notably Birmingham Council of Voluntary Organisations (BCVO), All Saints Action Network (ASAN) in Wolverhampton and Five Lamps in the North East and Yorkshire.
There were probably as many consultants as practitioners at the Members Exchange meeting, and that left me wondering whether practitioners – particularly those that SAN has traditionally represented, voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises – are sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of information available to report on social impact and confused about which approach would best suit their needs.
In terms of finding a suitable approach to reporting on social value and impact, it seems to me that there are a few fundamental questions to ask;
- What is the purpose of producing a social impact report?
- Who is going to see it and what use can they make of it?
- Does it need to be complex or could it be done relatively simply?
- What detail is needed to satisfy the stakeholders?
Organisations that use SAN’s social accounting and audit framework like the flexibility to include an array of different tools in their reporting. They can draw on existing quality assurance/ management information AND include a SROI element to dig deeper into financial returns if they choose to.
The point is that the SAN SAA framework offers the flexibility to use different tools and data in the reporting of both performance and impact.
Additionally, SAN uniquely has a network of accredited social auditors who can be contracted to audit the social accounts. At a time when demonstrating social value is becoming an increasingly necessary requirement, the independent auditing of the accounts is a vital component of verifying the authenticity and validity of the information, provided in much the same way as financial auditors do with financial accounts.
Sean Smith, SAN Director and West Midlands Regional Coordinator www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk
Social Audit Network SAN 