Over the last couple of months, I have had the pleasure of speaking at several events where ‘social value’ featured strongly on the agenda.
In Liverpool, the Social Audit Network Annual Conference examined how social accounting can support civil society organisations to tackle poverty….
In Edinburgh, at an event convened by Community Enterprise, social and community enterprise organisations debated the changing practice of social impact measurement….
‘Facts alone don’t change how people think… We need to understand how people think about poverty and why… Our society’s shared values can help build support to solve UK poverty’
Joseph Rowntree Foundation[1]
The true purpose of ‘charity’ is to tackle poverty and disadvantage. That’s what charities and other social purpose organisations do – address inequality, help people who are less fortunate, and protect, campaign and lobby on their behalf. Arguably, what is variously referred to as responsible or purposeful business, or even social value, will include actions to tackle poverty.
To truly understand poverty, and the outcomes and impact in terms of how an organisation’s actions are tackling poverty, we need to hear the views of stakeholders who are in poverty… including those in need, but also the people who donate, who invest, who collect intelligence, and who work to tackle poverty in all its forms.
We need to understand the forms of poverty. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has described, poverty is not only about not having enough money – it’s about not having enough food, poor housing and heating, poor wellbeing, and a poor environment to live in.
We also need to learn from the intelligence available from research, case studies and reports drawn together to inform our planning, decision-making and investment.
…and we really need to give ‘value’ – meaning and worth – to the work that we are doing to tackle poverty.
The Social Audit Network has 8 Principles[2] for social accounting and audit:
These principles are all based in creating a logical and consistent approach to collecting and using data as part of an organisation’s arrangements for understanding and reporting on addressing social deprivation and its social impact.
On 17th October, SAN Presents… an exploration of poverty in the eyes of a range of stakeholders, including Big Lottery, Big Society Capital, WOCAN, the 2030 Hub, the Universities of Huddersfield and Salford, Halton CAB and the Bolton Social Business Collective.
And across 3 aspects of poverty – food, social wellbeing and money.
Taking inspiration from the work of the JRF, and also the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we will explore how following the SAN principles and embedding social accounting into your organisation’s work can help your social economy organisation get to grips with robustly reporting on the effort to tackle poverty.
We will also explore an international dimension with the help of WOCAN; Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, a women-led international membership network of women and men professionals and women’s associations.
The event also coincides with the 26th anniversary of the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Book your place now to join in the debate!
SAN presents… Understanding Poverty
The Social Audit Network’s Annual Gathering
Wednesday 17th October 2018
54 St James Street, Liverpool. L1 0AB
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/san-presents-understanding-poverty-tickets-48057029870
Social Accounting and Audit allows social economy organisations to build on existing monitoring, documentation and reporting systems to develop a process to account fully for social, environmental and economic impacts, report on performance and draw up action plans to improve on that performance. Through this process, an organisation can understand its impact on the surrounding community and build a role as a catalyst for tackling poverty.
Anne Lythgoe
www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk
[1] https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/talking-about-poverty-uk-what-works
[2] http://www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk/getting-started/what-is-social-accounting-and-audit/
“There are always two people in every picture, the photographer and the viewer” Ansel Adams.
At Give2Gain, in Stockport, we offer a range of networking meetings and workshops that promote local cross sector relationship building. We are big fans of the stakeholder experience. As we account for the social good we believe we provide, the process is brought alive by the role our stakeholders play in exploring information and testing assumptions. Continue reading A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
If nothing else, the Social Value Act has led to an explosion in the number of ‘tools’ to measure social value…
Social Value UK offers 36 online tools and software to help people like you and me use in accounting for and reporting on social value. The Social Value Hub, hosted by Social Enterprise UK, includes a vast range of tools, case studies and advice about measuring social value and the Inspiring Impact programme has many similar resources available. Continue reading Making social accounting relevant for you….
In his recent blog for the Social Audit Network (SAN), Alan Kay sent out a rallying cry to the social economy:
‘I think that social enterprises should be looking seriously and overtly at the degree to which they contribute to social capital. This would mean putting in place how they build trust between people and organisations; how they encourage reciprocal working and mutuality; how they state and then live up to their values; how they support a commitment to a community and a sense of belonging; and how they actively create connectedness through informal and formal social networks. Continue reading Social accounting should be about good organisational practice, not just a tool for measuring social value…
I attended two events recently and both got me thinking about the question in the title of this blog.
One was a seminar led by Stephen Osborne which examined the ‘value’ created by public services. The other was the Social Audit Network (SAN) Annual Gathering.
Stephen Osborne is an esteemed and well-regarded academic at the University of Edinburgh Business School and has written extensively on public services. He was speaking at Glasgow Caledonian University and three things struck me about his talk and the subsequent discussion.
The first was that delivering services in response to public needs requires a quite different approach from running a business that sells products. Apparently, legislation states that public sector organisations have a duty to respond to ‘need’ in the population. Some discharge this by delivering services, others commission or buy the services from others.
The key point is that the public sector must address ‘need’ which is evidenced in the population rather than creating demand for a service or product. In any case, the delivery of the service should use a ‘different business logic’ which is dependent on the co-operation and trust of citizens. This working together and collusion is about adding value and positive change for citizens – in terms of meeting the needs, improving people’s quality of life, creating capacity within the community and generally making a better society.
The second was that public service delivery has fundamentally different values and a different end-game in comparison to running an enterprise. The delivery can use business management methods to improve internal systems, but it is essentially quite a different animal with a different set of values. This possibly has implications for social and community enterprises that also address social needs – they may need to look at their values as well as their financial bottom line.
The third relates to the discussion following the presentation, where there was a debate on accountability and the need to track, measure and report on whether or not the public service delivery was actually achieving its goals. The verbal exchanges recognised that tangible and often measurable indicators can be used to explain what has been delivered and to what effect, however, the less tangible, outcomes in terms of happiness, confidence and self-esteem are harder to account for.
Osbourne said that these highly important factors require a more investigative approach and one that often is inevitably more time-consuming and more expensive. It is interesting, in passing, that many local authorities have not re-instated previously abolished national performance measures – mainly due to cost. There would seem to be an opportunity to set local and meaningful targets on ‘social impact’ which is happening in Salford and reportedly across Greater Manchester as part of the devolution agreement.
The SAN Gathering was held in Liverpool on 20th October and was in two parts.
The morning looked at the basis of social accounting and audit and a number of case studies were presented which examined things that had worked well and others that were more of a challenge. There appeared to be a general consensus that regular reporting on the change that happens as a result of what a social or community enterprise does, is a good thing.
The afternoon concentrated on how we can believe what is contained in social reports.
An increasing number of annual social reports are being written by a wide range of organisations – from the small community-based enterprises running lunch clubs to the mega-corporate bodies providing a range of social services – both often under contract to, or at least working alongside, the public sector. With more and more organisations being contracted to deliver services for citizens in our society – how do we know they are doing a good job?
Looking at unsubstantiated and unverified social reports makes me concerned that self-reporting as advocated by approaches such as social accounting, may descend into purely marketing exercises. There must be some kind of ‘audit’ of social reporting to ensure faith in, and the rounded integrity of, social reports.
Over many years SAN has worked with social, voluntary and community organisations in developing a ‘social audit process’ where qualified SAN social auditors chair a Panel meeting which is a learning and supportive process as well as providing rigorous and robust scrutiny of an organisation’s social report.
The afternoon session at the Gathering also considered standards for audit processes and in particular, the forthcoming BSI standards for social value assessment reports were mentioned. This has to be welcomed as a way of ensuring that social organisations are not pedalling ‘fake news’.
A nagging concern, however, is that standards will be created by umbrella bodies without the active involvement of organisations on the ground – things will be done to people and grassroots organisations rather than with them. In applying national standards across the board, there is a significant danger of turning the ‘social audit’ into yet another tick-box compliance exercise, especially if it is controlled by a national standards institute.
In conclusion, I want to tie these two events together as in my mind there would appear to be common threads.
Finally, there would appear to be a considerable degree of consensus within the public and social sectors on the need for social reporting – not only of the tangible but also the intangible.
There is wide recognition that there has to be some form of check or audit to ensure that reality is reflected in the reporting.
My plea is that in setting social audit standards they are not too complicated but are understandable and accessible (in all its meanings). Only that way will they become accepted and adopted by all.
Alan Kay – Social Audit Network (SAN) www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk
The increasing interest in ‘social value’ has led to an expansion of the social economy, big corporates rushing to show their ethical credentials and public sector organisations publishing their policies and new procurement strategies for social impact…
But a swift review of these actions shows a worrying trend – we are starting to overlook the environment.
In England and Wales, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires public bodies to consider how the services they commission and procure might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of the area.
What is not widely known is that social value originated in response to environmental sustainability policy and practice. Indeed, in construction, the concept of sustainability has been ‘business as usual’ for many years.
I believe that in 2017 there is now a pressing need to focus on the places where people live, the environment around us and the resources that we use. Increasing population causes waste, uses natural resources and creates global warming…. Whilst politicians pull away from arguably ineffectual climate change agreements, the impacts of human activity on our planet and people expand in scale and depth.
We have already seen global warming rising by over 1 degree, and climate change is now leading to increasingly severe impacts – from rapidly melting sea ice at the poles and 50-degree heatwaves in India, to floods in Bangladesh and drought in California. The UK is seeing dramatic impacts too – with severe flooding in almost every region and country in the UK in recent years[1].
In Manchester air pollution causes over 1,000 premature deaths each year[2]. Local authorities spend billions of pounds each year dealing with waste. Fly tipping is on the increase. Energy costs are spiralling. Green belt land is being sacrificed to build homes…
I originally trained as a landscape architect and learned about how to create a ‘genius loci’. Gardeners such as Capability Brown created spaces where people wanted to be and felt happy; a sense of place that makes people feel good. It’s not really surprising that the happiest place to live in the UK is the Outer Hebrides.[3] Away from all that pollution so common on the mainland, in a beautiful landscape, with renewable energy schemes and pride in the local environment. But even this idyllic life is under threat from sea level rise.
So, if our planet is suffering, and our people’s health and wellbeing is at risk; how can we reverse the trend of ‘social value’ being only about jobs, training and doing local business? (Surely these are really economic factors anyway?)
Instead of ‘socio-economic’, should we be thinking about ‘socio-environmental’? We may be helping people to access employment, but are they physically and mentally healthy enough to stay in these jobs?
Perhaps it’s time for a renewed look at ‘think global, act local’ – many little things done near to home can make a difference. But we now need more of the difference to be made closer to home as well as for our planet.
If ‘social value’ must include environmental benefits – as the legislation states – then using the Social Audit Network’s www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk social accounting methodology is one way to prove the positive benefit that you can have on the environment; to manage and improve your performance; and be accountable for this to your stakeholders – and the planet.
SAN resources include a simple ‘green office checklist’ and tips on how to calculate your carbon footprint. There are many simple online tools available for tracking environmental measures.
Being accountable for environmental measures is a compulsory element of the SAN methodology. We have been challenged for this. Why should an organisation which is set up for a purpose such as providing training opportunities for young people have to report on its environmental impact?
The answer is because the organisation might use natural resources and energy, create waste or pollutants, employ staff who travel; and because those young people might be living shorter lives affected by air pollution, in an unpleasant and dirty neighbourhood, unable to afford to heat their homes. AND because we are heading for a climatic emergency – over 3 degrees warming – and we all will need to do everything that we can to protect humanity from catastrophic levels of climate change.
Anne Lythgoe, Social Audit Network – info@socialauditnetwork.org
[1] Friends of the Earth 2017
[2] Public Health England 2015
[3] Office for National Statistics 2016
Legend has it that the King of Siam once gave rare albino elephants to courtiers who had displeased him, that they might be ruined by the animals’ upkeep costs.
These days, the term ‘white elephant’ more often refers to an extravagant but useless gift that cannot be easily disposed of or serves little purpose, or perhaps a beautiful but functionless building that nobody visits….
A few weeks ago, I spoke at a conference for social enterprise organisations. I work in local government, so I talked about how commissioners of public services are increasingly looking for the ‘social value’ which a business in the social economy might bring. I was followed by three speakers from the private sector, all of whom had committed to ‘buy social’ and include social enterprises in their supply chains.
A group of local social enterprises spoke about their good work and the social impact that they were creating through activities ranging from support for people with mental health problems, disabled young people being able to visit the beach, to training for families to eat healthily and take more exercise.
All valuable and necessary goals in local communities.
After the conference, one of my private sector colleagues confided in me that he was struggling to purchase from social enterprises because they just didn’t sell the things that his company needed to buy…
And I thought about my own experience of public sector commissioning and how few of our contracts are placed directly with social enterprises (despite my employer having put a great deal of effort into trying to do so).
So, what is going wrong? Why are some social enterprises more successful than others?
Although the private and public sectors often want to buy goods and services from organisations with a social purpose, perhaps they can’t directly buy the social value or social impact that those organisations are keen to sell? Buyers want to purchase a product and get the social value ‘added’?
Maybe the social enterprises that ARE successful have found a way to sell products which by their very nature create social impact? Maybe they understand their market as well as their social value?
NMC Design and Print is an enterprise linked to the Neuro Muscular Centre in Winsford, Cheshire. NMC has used its social accounting http://www.nmcentre.com/nmc/about-us/social-accounts/ to engage with its market and create a commercially successful social enterprise providing a Design and Print service run by, and employing, designers with muscular dystrophy.
The products that they are selling include graphic design, other digital services and printing. The ‘social value’ comes with the fact that people with muscular dystrophy, who would otherwise struggle to find employment, provide these services.
NMC knows and engages with its market, understands its social value and has expanded rapidly.
See Detail is a company that makes the best use of the skills of the staff to provide services that are exceptional and rewarding for everyone. In addition, they provide autism awareness training to the companies and organisations that they work with, and finally they are lifting people out of the, so-called benefits trap, and making a real contribution to society both in terms of wealth generation and in innovation and creativity. See Detail’s main business is software testing which people on the autistic spectrum are ideally suited.
Both NMC Design and Print and See Detail have managed to combine their business model and their social impact to create a commercially successful social enterprise. They have ‘packaged’ their social value for their own specific market. Sadly, many ‘social enterprises’ that I come across have not managed to do that.
Instead, social value dominates their purpose. This might be too specific or on too small a scale to be beneficial to prospective customers and the ‘enterprise’ ceases to be viable. A ‘beast’ is created which is valuable to a discrete group and often outwardly impressive but which is impossible to sustain and not really wanted by those with the means to pay for it.
So, my ‘take-away’ messages to social enterprises everywhere are;
Anne Lythgoe
SAN Vice- Chair
I believe that Social Accounting and Audit (SAA) can be a framework for accountability and reporting, which, if used to support public procurement, will enable devolution. Despite the current move towards greater control of purchasing by central government in Westminster, SAA can be a way to make devolution work.
Devolution is commonly understood to be the transfer of functions previously exercised by ministers and the national parliament to a subordinate elected body on a geographical basis.
In Greater Manchester (GM), we have been leading the way. Budgets for health and social care, planning and housing, business support and low carbon technologies have been entrusted to sub-regional level by Government.
Furthermore, ‘social value’ is now enshrined in GM-wide Procurement Policy, and the need to maximise spending power for the benefit of local people – to achieve a social, environmental and economic impact – is recognised as a major way to ‘sweat’ public, private and third sector investment for the common good.
Over 10 years ago, at the New Local Government conference, David Milliband announced, ‘at the local level we need a stronger framework of opportunity and responsibility …. – in fact a double devolution, not just to the Town Hall but beyond, to neighbourhoods and individual citizens’.
The Office of the Third Sector (now Civil Society) was created and local authorities were encouraged to devolve the delivery of local services to local people.
But it didn’t quite happen like that…
What we have in GM isn’t a ‘double devolution’, but it is one where the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector has a strong voice. Words like ‘co-production’, ‘co-design’, ‘asset based approaches’ and ‘reform’ are used to indicate an evolving sense of, ‘we are all in it together’. The delivery isn’t yet devolved to local people.
At the heart of GM devolution is a need to make the local economy sustainable. It is recognised that if this is to work, voluntary, community, social enterprise organisations, neighbourhoods and citizens must be ready and able to take the opportunity and responsibility. And they must convince Town Halls that they can deliver. Maybe therefore, this is why the double devolution hasn’t really happened?
SAA is not a new concept, having been implemented in various forms and by a wide range of organisations since the 1970s. But there is a growing number of organisations in GM that have adopted this approach to help them measure their overall impact and quality by integrating the ‘proving – improving – and be accountable’ processes into their day-to-day operations.
SAA accurately describes what an organisation is achieving in economic, social and environmental terms, and allows it to demonstrate to others what its principle purposes are and what it does. It assesses social and community enterprises in a holistic way, incorporating both the views of everyone connected with the organisation and measuring indicators of its success.
The framework also includes independent verification, an audit process whereby the results can be proved to be robust and reliable, which can give confidence to both the organisation and the Town Hall looking to devolve responsibility or place a contract.
One of the main elements of SAA is the comprehensive involvement of an organisation’s stakeholders, and this can prove one of the most important reasons for procuring from the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. SAA can demonstrate to health and other commissioners that service users and staff are indeed involved in the planning, operation and management of services from social enterprises.
Unlimited Potential (UP) is a social enterprise providing health and happiness services, which grew up in the Charlestown and Lower Kersal area of Salford.
Formed by residents participating in a local health task group, and now tackling health issues in partnership with local people, its work includes managing services at two local healthy living centres, health outreach services and work which addresses the specific health and happiness issues of local residents.
UP is very keen to prove its ‘positive impact’ as it develops a sustainable business strategy, and has used social accounting and audit to do this.
UP’s ability to demonstrate the benefits of its work through social accounting and audit, adds ‘value’ to public service commissioners who are provided with evidence of partnership working, involvement of local people in the design and management of services, innovation, responsiveness to local need and local ownership. This has contributed to UP becoming a nationally recognised and respected social enterprise.
SAA can be used to demonstrate individual and collective strengths, prove the sector’s competence as providers of public services, and meeting the challenge of taking local responsibility and citizen led action.
It can help devolution to happen.
Anne Lythgoe, Vice Chair & Treasurer/Finance Director www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk
History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past. A. J. P. Taylor
I increasingly believe that to understand why things are the way they are and why they are not something else we have to know about the past and try to understand it.
I am currently helping to advise on a research programme called CommonHealth which is co-ordinated by the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University. One of the really interesting elements of the research is a look back at what happened with the community business movement mainly in Scotland in the 1980s and 90s. It is extraordinary how we interpret the past in different ways adding and detracting bits and pieces to fit our view of the present. The past is definitely open to interpretation but, if we manage to be as objective as possible, it can help us see the present and the immediate future with more clarity.
One interesting aside, and an issue that has arisen within the research project, is that the years ‘post-internet’ are much more widely accessible than the time before the internet which is sometimes overlooked as it involves reports and archives on dusty shelves…
Involvement in this research has recently led me to think about the historical roots of social impact assessment – where it has come from. In this blog I want to consider the reporting on impact and in particular the historical development of the principles around social accounting and audit.
Long before the establishment of the Social Audit Network and back in 1993, Community Enterprise Lothian (who I worked for at that time) worked jointly with others to hold a conference in Edinburgh called ‘Counting Community Profit!: Defining and Measuring Community Benefits of Local Development and Business Enterprises’. The conference attracted a number of important speakers – George McRobie (new economics foundation and Founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group), James Robertson (author of ‘Future Wealth’ and ‘Future Work’), Rob Gray (then Professor at University of Dundee and author of ‘The Greening of Accountancy’) – to name just a few.
The conference was over-subscribed and pivotal in many ways as the Institute for Social and Ethical Accountability (ISEA) – now called Accountability – was formed shortly after and the new economics foundation went on to explore ‘social audit’ more and subsequently wrote the ‘Social Audit Workbook’ with John Pearce. Those working in ‘social audit’ as it was known then, used much of what had been discussed in the conference to devise principles for ‘social audit’.
After further consideration following the conference ‘social audit’ adopted the following principles:
Multi-perspective: reflect the views of (all) those involved with or affected by the organisation.
Comprehensive: (ultimately) embrace all aspects of an organisation’s social etc. performance.
Regular: take place regularly (annually) and not on a one-off, occasional basis, and become embedded in the culture and operation of the organisation.
Comparative: offer a means whereby an organisation can compare its own performance over time; relate performance to appropriate external norms; and make comparisons with other organisations doing similar work.
Verification: audited by one or more persons with no vested interest in the organisation.
Disclosure: findings made available to all stake-holders and published for the wider community.
The over-arching principle of continuously improving social performance.
It is interesting that the principles do not include measurability as it was recognised at the time that many social aims are not measurable in the sense that you use a standard yardstick and give it a numerical or standardised value. Those pioneers in social accounting accepted that it would be a nonsense to try and measure everything – but where you can, do; and where you cannot, still try to assess the change in qualitative terms.
The above principles were espoused for quite a number of years. In the mid-2000s connections were made with those keen on advocating Social Return on Investment and following a joint meeting in 2008 the fledgling SROI Network and the more established Social Audit Network (SAN) agreed to share a number of the same principles. There was not complete agreement as SAN felt it was not possible to financialise all outcomes. However, in the interests of collaboration a joint document (updated in 2010) was written and made publicly available.
Shortly after this meeting both organisations changed them slightly and adopted slightly differing principles to satisfy their differing audiences – the current Principles of Social Value have been published by Social Value UK (previously the SROI Network and the Social Impact Analysists Association). And for reference check out the eight SAN principles.
So what does mean for us now?
Certainly principles around social impact are important especially with the expanding interest in enterprises with a central community or social benefit. Both approaches – Social Accounting and Audit; and Social Return on Investment – use their respective set of principles to assess the veracity of social reports using one or other of the approaches. My problem with both sets is that ‘process’ has got in the way of ‘principles’. That is some of the ‘principles’ are really about the process itself.
I would like to suggest that with the benefit of hindsight – which is where this blog started – we should have a rethink about the principles of social impact. Concurrent with the evolution of these principles we should also look at the key aspects of all organisations to see if they are socially responsible. Those key aspects being how an organisation treats its staff and volunteers; how is it governed; how it uses surplus; its financial sustainability; its impact on the environment; and how it affects the local economy.
By building on what has happened in this field of social impact in the past, we should be able to develop tools, approaches and key principles for the future.
The ‘stories about the past’ provide the bedrock for understanding the present, and the development of the future. Is this what progress is?
Finally – and I hesitate – I would like to suggest a tweaked set of principles for social value…
| Clarifying the true change and purpose that an organisation is working towards | Focus |
| Tracking changes so that comparisons can be made over time and between organisations | Improvement |
| Embedding the social impact process and making it central to what the organisation does | Regular |
| Considering more than one view in assessing social value created by an organisation | Multi-perspective |
| Demonstrating that data and information used is important and significant | Materiality |
| Checking that the interpretation of the change that happens is as true as possible | Verification |
| Involving stakeholders in assessing change that happens | Engagement |
| Being open and disclosing what an organisation has achieved or not | Transparent |
Bingo!
Alan Kay, Social Audit Network (SAN) www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk
Social Audit Network SAN 