Social impact tool records over £50m in social value in 2018
Melanie May | 25 January 2019 | News
A bespoke social value reporting tool to track and record the value of organisations’ social value efforts has measured an impact of over £50 million for clients spanning law, construction, transport services and housing providers.
Impact was created and built in-house by Reason Digital, a social enterprise specialising in working exclusively with pro-social organisations, after three years of research and development,
The web-based social value reporting tool streamlines how companies can capture and monitor business processes, assets or any organisational activity that has a social or environmental benefit and produces real-time reports on its impact. This process is completely automated and converts activity into meaningful social value outcomes.
Over the course of 2018, Impact has been used by businesses including DWF Law, Places for People, and One Manchester, and charities such as Breast Cancer Care and NHS volunteering hub Helpforce. It has also been adapted for collecting a wide range of evaluation data for New Philanthropy Capital.
Examples of recorded social value during 2018 include:
- DWF launched the DWF Foundation in November 2015 and they have given over £224K to 99 charities
- From April 2018 over 42,000 Places for People customers took part in involvement activities and over 1,000 people have been helped into work, training or volunteering. Customers have saved £342,000 by accessing affordable loans and energy efficiency measures, installed between April and September, saving £85,000 on fuel bills. Frontline staff have logged details of 2,500 activities since April, designed to help customers
- One Manchester saved its housing customers £1m, invested £300,000 in community projects and created £6m-worth of social value through supporting people into employment, providing access to cultural and leisure activities to alleviate social isolation, providing training and work placements to residents, and investing over £50,000 to expand businesses and support market traders in its areas
Matt Haworth, the co-founder of Impact and Reason Digital, said:
“We built Impact to sit at the heart of social value strategies for a range of charities and businesses. It offers all data in one place, so companies can immediately see the impact they are having. Ease of measurement allows the tool to empower users, encourage companies to improve their social value and help socially inclined staff assess their successes.
“Impact started as a government funded project to explore a better way to measure social value. Following considerable development Impact boasts a team of social value experts who deliver our proven and feature-rich tool, which has gained traction within a growing client base. It’s a constantly evolving tool, developed in-house by our own developers, who frequently enhance its functionality.”Advertisement
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.