1. Why and how social housing
providers measure the social
impact of their community
investment activities
Vanessa Wilkes
Funded by:
Hosted by:
2. Brief Background
• Sponsored by National Housing Federation
• Primary Research
– Telephone interview with 34 housing providers
– 6 case studies, face to face interviews
• 3 in the North West between 6-8 people
• 3 in the West Midlands in each
– Face to face interviews with stakeholders /
network actors (10 interviews)
– Focus on influences and implementation
3. The case studies
Method Initial findings
A SROI (now Previously used CITs
rejected) Looking to developing an approach to measure (in a monetary
sense) the contribution of an initiative
• To the business
• To the individual
and linked to the budgeting process
‘keeping an eye’ on developments
B SROI Second year of SROI
Undertaken within the organisation
Project based, but continually extending the scale and scope
External organisation retained as critical friend and validate reports
Sustainability maps of communities based on 25 indicators
4. Continued …
Method Initial findings
C Views (substance) Tracks individuals
Used by all providers
Looking to develop a GIS system which contains all
n’hood data, show associated costs (neighbourhood
scorecard)
View impact of spend to determine social
interventions
Cross organisation virtual neighbourhood team
D Every Child Matters Adopted due to joint working with the L.A
Framework SROI being carried out by consultant due to lack of
SROI capacity
Outcome Star
5. Continued …
Method Initial findings
E Previously used CITs Period of research into different tools/approaches
and looked at IPD Developing a framework:
-Guidance on impact measurement by size of project
-Suite of tools available
Mix of centrally undertaken measurement and team
based
F Social Accounting Very steep learning curve
Social Impact Champion ‘enabled’ to adopt and
develop it
External support throughout the process
Challenged organisational processes
Being enhanced by LM3
SROI rejected
6. What is important?
• A shared understanding of:
– The purpose of measuring social impact
– What can / can’t be measured
• Theory of change
– The methodology & its’ language
• How the data is going to be used
• The organisation should be the first audience
• Continual improvement
• Targeting
• Applicability of the tool / method to the organisation
and the projects
– Uniqueness of organisation
7. What is important?
• Commitment at the top & committed resource
– A ‘social impact champion’
• Embeddedness
• A transition period
– Make mistakes
– Learn
– Roll out
• Recognition that systems/processes may have
to change
Editor's Notes
Important to note that all discussions relate to that which is over and above their job as a traditional landlord – whether CI is considered to be a core function or more of an add on
My focus is less on the tools than on the way in which they have been adopted and embedded – looking at the different influences both within and external to the organisation
A – too restrictive and project basedB - Would like to do an organisation wide SROI but concerns around double-countingConservative with their financial proxiesA- HelenaB - Aspire
Views - if everything relates back to a neighbourhood either your bottom line or your top line, your business including everything, So your staffing costs, your legal costs, your consultants’ costs, your what you pay to local authorities. What’s costing you more, you know. So what neighbourhoods are actually being a magnet for your money? And then for you to understand, well, what impact are you having? By being able to understand the social value of what you’re doing then you can start managing your interventions better than we do at the momentVirtual teams – which have all the information on money spent, churn of properties and try to understand the complex social issues which underpin the characteristic of the street / neighbourhood Every child matters - there are a number of statements which are used as part of the initial assessment. Work the family to identify where they are at in terms of those statements on a scale of 1 to 5, and then we then use as an interim review, and then an intervention review as well to see what progress has been made against the statements and against the scale.C – LHTD – Castle Vale
IPD – measure the benefit of housing associations to the economy – Used in Dutch housing associarionsSocial Accounting – business being re-engineered with this as a driverefit housing associations make to the economy – measures asset performance and allows social investment to be captured.E – OrbitF - kht
Embeddedness – people speak of a culture change which may need to happen
