1. society

 6 Princi ples Organisations Demonstrate to Succe ssfully Measure Social Valu e
Over many years we have wondered why we often hear people saying that staff and
volunteers will not collect monitoring data at all or consistently; evaluation takes too much
time; we must have an external evaluation and the assumption that this will be somehow be
more objective and meaningful.
Through developing Social Value – Made Real and our many experiences of working in and
with organisations it is clear that there are some fundamental reasons why these questions
continue to arise. Much of the literature on monitoring and evaluation, measuring impact, and
economic values start unsurprisingly with aims of a service and defining the outputs and
outcomes that will be measured. In our experience this is fine providing the behaviours and
culture of the organisation are such that everyone buys-in to collecting the data, understands
why it is being collected and knows how to analyse it, let alone the problem of investing time
and resources to achieve this.
In order to achieve what we believe most organisations want to achieve, which is to be better
at monitoring and evaluate their services and measure their social, economic and
environmental impact, we have found that there are 6 principles successful organisations
demonstrate:
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Meani ngful Vision that puts customers/services users at th e centre of its
developing an understand ing of what matters most to them.
Organisations spend time and financial resources developing Vision statements,
Mission Statements, Strategic Plans and Business Plans. How often do these plans
end up gathering dust on a shelf or in some forgotten folder on the computer network?
How often are these plans used as the route map to manage performance and
measure impact?
Clear Vision and strategy are essential elements for building strong monitoring and
evaluation frameworks in organisations or for specific projects. Vision should describe
the desired future state where, perhaps, your service or organisation is not needed or
where the issues you are addressing no longer exist. Vision is not a statement of
purpose. Unless your vision and strategy focuses on the change and difference your
customers/service users want to achieve then measuring outcomes and impact is
going to be difficult from the outset.
In today’s public policy and legislative environment the need to demonstrate person
centred services and those that are meeting individual needs is becoming even more
important. We have worked in and with organisations where this basic principle has
been lost and the operations or service design is based at best on what staff believe
customers/service users want and at worst on staff needs of how they wish to
organise service delivery rather than the wishes of their customers/service users.
© JB Eventus 2015, All rights reserved
Issue 1 – April 2015
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Values and Culture that informs behaviour of all staff and volunteers and
supports achie ving quali ty standards
You may ask what does this have to do with measuring social value or monitoring and
evaluation? Values that are underpinned by behaviours that inform performance and
quality standards are probably the most important element of embedding monitoring
and evaluation into an organisation. Values connect all the elements required to
deliver lasting results, achieve quality and measure impact.
Unless the values of your organisation are developed with your customers/service
users, staff and volunteers and define how everyone will behave and what they expect
of each other it is unlikely you will achieve your vision and strategy and be able to
embed measuring social value and monitoring and evaluation into day-to-day
operations and service delivery.
Values must be underpinned by clearly defined behaviours and expectations. They
support your quality standards of service delivery. Creating a culture where your
values are lived and where the vision of change is embedded in what you do will create
the right environment for achieving good quality data collection, where it will be owned
and understood and embraced by all. By creating this culture it is more likely staff will
collect the data required to prove the difference services make; they will find the
feedback and process motivating and rewarding as they hear the stories and can see
for themselves the change and results of their work.
3
Service Aims and Objectives that are measurable creat ing a clea r
picture of how the vision will b e achieved
Creating aims and objectives is a commonly understood process by funders,
commissioners, public sector organisations and not-for-profit sector. It has been
drummed into us over many years. Most funding bids or tenders will ask you to
describe your organisational aims, service aims, and objectives. Increasingly they will
also ask you to describe the change or difference your service will make and how you
will measure your success and impact.
Despite this acceptance of the need for clear aims and objectives often they are not so
clearly defined, often they are not measurable - they are statements of intent. They do
not follow-on from the Vision and Values and they do not provide sufficient clarity in
order to demonstrate the difference the service will make and therefore provide the
basis for creating meaningful outcomes.
Each stage of this process is often seen as a task to do rather than being part of a living
process that informs how you will work, behave, structure and deliver services.
Monitoring and evaluation are often tagged on at the end of a project or after a set
period of time, as something you know you must do, even believe it is important, but
not seen as part of what the organisation and the individuals who work/volunteer
experience on a day-to-day basis.
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Outputs, Outcomes and Qual ity Stand ards that provide th e tools to
evidence how your vision, aims and objectives are being met.
We all learn how to count things from an early age. Along with learning to speak small
children are taught to count their fingers, their sweets, we count to give them warnings
of when something will end; or before we swing them as we walk along the road.
Counting becomes so embedded in our lives no wonder we finding counting easy and
measuring outcomes less easy. Why is this a problem? Because many organisations
end up counting too much, creating systems that count everything, funders ask you to
count the number of different categories of people who use your service; and we
produce reports with graphs and charts that look amazing showing the many numbers
of different people we were in contact with. But this is all fairly meaningless unless we
know if that contact and experience was one that achieved anything, did it make a
difference to them, was the experience a good one, did we behave as we said we would?
Social Value – Made Real enables outputs, quality standards and outcomes to be created
against a consistent framework of 10 Social, Economic and Environmental Indicators.
This enables single or multiple services/projects to apply the same framework whilst
having a flexible approach to developing measurable outcomes for their service
enabling on-going performance management and evaluation to take place. Funders and
commissioners can apply this framework to create a structure to evaluate and compare
a range of providers who may have different outcomes but all comply with a single
framework for measuring social, economic and environmental impact.
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Data collection should be built into day-to-day service delivery and
evaluation should form an integral part of reg ular review and
performance management
Are you one of those organisations that realises it needs to write an evaluation report for
a funder, to prepare the end of year Annual Report and so set about it, with limited time
and resources to evaluate your service only to find out that you do not have consistent
data on which to base your evaluation. Alternatively, you might find you have a mass of
data, especially output data, and you sit there looking at it all scratching your head
wondering what on earth you are going to do with it all? Sounds familiar?
Collecting outputs and outcomes data needs to be done regularly. This is also the case
with evaluation. Evaluation is not something that should only happen at one point in
time. Evaluation should be undertaken regularly as it is an on-going process to support
continuous improvement, checking performance and asking questions in order to
ensure you are doing what you said you would do; working to your stated quality
standards and that your staff and volunteers are meeting the expectations of your values
and standards of service delivery. In fact it should be part of your performance
management, built into supervision, appraisal, team meetings and regular service
reviews.
Data collection should take many forms, how you will collect data and what data
you collect should be an integral part of your strategic planning and resource
allocations.
Data collection should include a range of methods that are achievable within your
organisation. Statistics and numbers are important but these should be kept to a
minimum to provide context and show you are achieving the outputs and targets set.
Outcomes should be measured through statistical contextual data as well as sampling
of individual journey travelled towards change and measuring the difference made and
stories that are written from the voice of customers/service users of their experience
showing whether you are achieving your vision or not; whether you have made a
difference to their lives: and providing the evidence to support evaluation of the
economic impact and social capital relating to the way you deliver your services.
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Eva luation Repo rts that are based on evidence of the diff erence made
and consid er s ocial, economic and envi ronmental impact and worth
How many evaluation reports have you seen that tell you what you have done rather
than what you have achieved? Evaluation is about making judgements, about
establishing the worth and value of what you do, whether you achieved what you set
out to do ie did the services you provide support meeting your vision, aims, objectives?
Did you achieve your outputs, outcomes and quality standards? Do they inform future
developments, change and continuous improvement? Do you write them just because
you have to – because a funder requires you to or because you have to complete your
annual charity return?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions then it is our belief that you have
expended effort and time for little reward. Evaluation should be something to
celebrate your achievements as well as something that everyone is involved in,
particularly your customers/service users; and it should motivate as well as provide
the basis for developing even better systems and services.
Bringing your statistics to life with structured stories and feedback that evidences what
you do will not only be more rewarding to write, but will be motivating for staff as well
as improve your organisational performance.
Social Value – Made Real reports, whilst clearly structured around our 10 Social,
Economic and Environmental value indicators, also place the service in its operating
context, internal and external, provides wider evidence of why you are doing what you
are doing as well as being person centred, focusing on the experience and needs of
customers/service users.
Gathering evidence and data in this structured way will ensure you can calculate
whether your services are achieving value for money; supporting early intervention
and prevention and calculating preventative values simply and effectively; as well as
looking at feedback and quality to see what you do differently and the added
benefits/social capital value of how you work.
Create reports that are inspiring and put the voice of your customer/service user at
the heart of your report, ensuring that what they value most is communicated
and shows the difference your services make.
Whether you use our framework or not following these 6 principles will ensure you are able to embed
performance management and monitoring and evaluation into your organisation.
Judith Cousin and Bill Giddings
Creators of Social Value – Made Real
Social Value – Made Real provides a structure that is broken down into achievable steps that can be
applied to small and large organisations, singe projects or multiple services or to funding or
commissioning processes. It is not a quick fix solution but it is one that achieves change and lasting
results.
For more information on our in-house facilitation; external training; or go to our resources pages where
you will find copies of recent reports and examples of some of our tools.
We are currently writing Social Value – Made Real into a toolkit which will be available to purchase later
this year.
Our website: www.jbeventus.org.uk or www.socialvalue-madereal.com
Contact us at: [email protected]
Tel: 01273 452225
To keep up to date join our Social Value – Made Real Community by completing this online form:
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