2025 is a really “interesting” moment for social value. Against a backdrop of global conflict, climate change and widespread political unrest, being part of a sector that is pushing for social progress feels increasingly important – occasionally verging on controversial.
This year the UK has also seen the Procurement Act and PPN 002 come into effect. Although the adoption of this legislation remains to be seen – it’s had a bolstering effect on the sector. The tools are there, if we choose to use them.
This rather incongruous collection of circumstances seems to have resulted in a social value sector that’s more united and energised than it has been for a while. There is a desire for action beyond just talking the talk – and a growing willingness to collaborate and cooperate to get there.
Can we capitalise on this moment and start to move the needle on the issues that count – such as the one million young people not in employment, education or training (NEET). If we get together and get seriously focused – what can we achieve?
No more outcomes vs KPIs
We’ve realised we need both short and long term measurement to drive change. The question now is how to get these different types of data to talk to each other in a useful way.
Could we map short term social value outputs against local authority measures like health inequality, nationwide, to identify patterns and see what we can learn? Who out there has the tools or platforms that can help us do this?
Building social value cultures that will last
For organisational values and missions to go the long haul, they need to be lived and breathed by the people that work in a place. Who is doing this well? How are they enabling it? What can we learn?
Amplifying VCSE voices
There’s a growing recognition that working with VCSEs is about value exchange rather than benefactor-beneficiary relationships. We need more VCSE voices in the room in order to make this happen effectively. At this year’s conferences this seemed to be on the up, at long last.
Creative thinking – not just box ticking
When social value becomes the filter through which you see the world, you can make connections that just weren’t there before. We loved the story from Jess Payne at Compass One (public sector catering) who used data to identify beef usage as their biggest source of carbon emissions. They then worked with the Ministry of Defence, their client, to switch their beef use to venison, which has a much smaller environmental impact (the MOD is one of the biggest landowners in the country and has to cull a lot of deer annually). Just shows what can be achieved when we combine smart data use with social value vision.
Thanks to the Institute for Social Value, Social Value Portal, Neighbourly and their respective partners for putting on such thought-provoking and useful events this month, and for inviting our MD Rob Wolfe to come along and speak alongside some excellent panellists.
Difficult questions were asked (always respectfully!) and answered. Learnings were shared – and not always the glossy takeaways, but also mistakes that can be learned from.
It’s an approach we’ve long hoped the sector would embrace, and it does seem that we are starting to move in the right direction. Hopefully we can keep up this energy and momentum. We are going to need it.
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