[00:00:00] Sarah Stone: So welcome to Let's Talk Social Value. I am here today with Catherine Manning, who is a board member of Social Value International. She's also head of Impact Practice at Impact Reporting and a program director of Measure Up, which is a free set of values. That anyone can use with any digital tool to value wellbeing.

[00:00:29] So if you've not come across Measure Up before, definitely look them up. She was one of the finalists for the 2023 Wise hundred Star of the Future Awards and this year, so just recently in January 25, was a finalist for the Pioneer of the Year Award with the Better Business Network. So Catherine, thank you for coming and joining us on the podcast.

[00:00:46] I'm so happy to have you. I'm very excited about picking your brains.

[00:00:48] Catherine Manning: Oh, thank you so much, Sarah. It's wonderful to be here with you and hopefully with lots of wonderful listeners too.

[00:00:55] Sarah Stone: We've had loads of really great conversations over the years, so it's nice to actually record one.

[00:00:59] Catherine Manning: Yeah, absolutely. And try and

[00:00:59] Sarah Stone: [00:01:00] hopefully not go off on a tangent.

[00:01:01] Well, yes, that's true. Yeah. There's

[00:01:02] Catherine Manning: lots of rabbit holes. Yeah. When it comes to social value and impact management practice, so it's really easy to go on a deep dive of something. Way over there when you've sort of started off on the journey of trying to get the bigger picture.

[00:01:16] Sarah Stone: So can I start by asking you about just like basics?

[00:01:19] So what is social value or social value impact measurement and why does it matter?

[00:01:24] Catherine Manning: So it's still terminology that there's a lot of. Discussion about for me at this point in time. There's a few particular definitions that I adhere to and that sort of guides my practice. One is linked into the UK government Green Book, right?

[00:01:41] They published or republished the government Green book guidance around evaluation and. Policy and practice and whatnot. I mean, it's a lot more technical than that, but broadly that's That'll do for now. Yeah, that'll do. And they've really clearly stated in that that social value or public value is about wellbeing and it's about [00:02:00] changing aspects of people's wellbeing.

[00:02:01] So for a load of my practice and just in general, right, I idea to that like social value is about wellbeing and it's about changing wellbeing and therefore. If we are measuring and managing social value, we really have to start to try to understand wellbeing and measure that. The other definition that really guides what I do, I mean this won't be a surprise thing as that you've already said, I'm on the board of Social Value International.

[00:02:27] It's the social value, international definition of social value, and that's about people's own perspective, their own valuation. Of the changes in their own wellbeing. I mean, that's not verbatim, but it's a really important definition from my perspective that differentiates that social value principles based approach from these other definitions of social value that are out there.

[00:02:54] And it's that person part of saying. If we're counting and [00:03:00] valuing these changes in wellbeing that people are experiencing, are we doing it ourselves over there, away from them, or are we doing it with them in person and whose value is it? It's their value. They should have a voice in how we value stuff.

[00:03:16] So that's the sort of definitions of what. Social value is that I follow and that help to guide my practice, right? What it means to me though, and why I am in this space, I suppose, is that we've got a very well set up system of counting one very limited version of value. We are really, really good at methodically counting money and letting that money.

[00:03:44] Numbers. The financial systems guide the majority of our decision making, no matter what type of organization we're in. Whether you're in private business, where there is that profit motive, you know it's a part of it, or a charity or a government [00:04:00] organization. The money metrics guide so much of our decision making and it's such a limited view of value.

[00:04:07] Yeah. Yeah. So social value means, to me, why I think it's so important is that we've gotta get out of this bit where we're spotlighting a very limited view of value and broaden out to the stuff that really matters to us. You know, our relationships, the nature around us, you know, our access and relationship with animals and plants and trees, the quality of our air.

[00:04:30] It's all this stuff that isn't captured within these financial systems, and we've got a real opportunity to be able to change the way that we think, the way that we make decisions, the way that we run our organizations, and we can choose to do that in a way where we prioritize. People's wellbeing and our care and integration with and sort of custodianship of the environment that we live in and rely on.

[00:04:59] And [00:05:00] that's the social value that got me to, you know, be,

[00:05:03] Sarah Stone: that's what got me into it as well. It's that moment where you, because value, I read Mariana ARDI's book. Mm-hmm. I mean, she's knew her brain is about 50 million times. Yeah. It's 50 million times bigger than mine, so I understood like half of it. But it really started me thinking about the concept of value, which is value and worth are incredibly complicated concepts when you start thinking about them.

[00:05:25] And I'm sure that you can learn about them, can't you at university and spend years and never really grasp them. Mm-hmm. But when you kind of think about this idea that the only real metric that we have for value is a pound or pencil or euro or dollar or whatever your currency is, and actually, you know that point you made that there are so many things that we have that we value that we wouldn't put a price on.

[00:05:45] It can be a, you know, like a metaphorical thing. Like you say, the quality of the air we breathe or the health of our child, or you know, our family relationships. But it can actually be a material thing. So it might be, I often use, when I'm talking about this, the example of a car, [00:06:00] you know, like you've got a car that you've had for years, right?

[00:06:03] And it's a banger, but the thing keeps going and then you have a crash. You write the car off or someone drives into you whatever it is, but what the insurance give you for the car, it's not worth the cost of the car, so you can't replace it. That car was worth more to you as a car that you could drive than its financial value.

[00:06:21] And that's without even taking emotion and the wellbeing thing into it. It's just that there are things that we value. That you can't put a price on. And when you start thinking like that, and then you look at how the world works, and particularly I'm super interested in how businesses operate, and you realize that businesses, the commercial system, the way that companies are structured, the way that they operate, the metric that they care about is that financial value, that money thing, which is why I think they make decisions that don't make sense to a lot of people.

[00:06:51] Catherine Manning: It's not just about. The example that you've given there is exactly right. The financial value that's given to that car, that [00:07:00] item, even when you buy it, then certainly when you're getting rid of it at the end, it doesn't capture what it's been worth to you. Having that thing that's helped you to have freedom, have good transport, maybe be able to transport your children or your family around, or someone that's important to you that's got access issues, for example.

[00:07:18] The other thing is that to be able to run that car all of that time, you wouldn't accept there just being one metric on the dials on the board. Your dashboard has got a bunch of different things that's telling you about the safety and the ability to be able to run that car on a daily basis. It's got your fuel, it's got your temperature, it's got all of the warning lights.

[00:07:44] Yet for an organization, if the financial metric is the one metric, we're like, oh, how are we doing there? Like, that's not good enough to be able to run the organization on a daily basis. And we totally accept [00:08:00] that with other things where we're like, well, of course I'm not just gonna look at the fuel.

[00:08:04] What about everything else that's going on? You

[00:08:06] Sarah Stone: are so right. You know, I, I was wondering where you were going with the dashboard. Yeah. Right. What was she talking

[00:08:11] Catherine Manning: about?

[00:08:13] Sarah Stone: I have never thought about it like that before, but you are absolutely right and it's why I'm super interested in this whole, you know?

[00:08:19] Mm-hmm. Whatever removing of DEI metric debate, because companies do take temperature and measure other metrics, don't they? You know, if you look in an annual report, they have a lot of other things that they look at, but it's almost like the only thing that people care about is profits. So there's always a profit warning or a, you know what I mean?

[00:08:37] If someone's profits have dropped, everybody gets very excited about it and very upset. And half the time there's a really good reason the profits have dropped. Maybe it's 'cause they've

[00:08:43] Catherine Manning: built a new factory or they might have raised up really high, and then people get really excited about that. But the reason behind that might be something that in the longer term is going to cause that organization a lot more problems.

[00:08:58] You know, we've, well, this is it. Yeah. [00:09:00] Increased our profits. By getting rid of loads of staff, which means that a load of the core functions are not properly serviced and therefore in a much shorter period of time, the company gets into a lot of trouble. Yeah, and I mean, it's probably an an analogy where it kind of falls down 'cause after a bit of time, but it's that over reliance on the financial metrics versus.

[00:09:26] More methodically and in a more integrated way, having these other things that are super important for people to be able to understand and measure and track and manage in relation to social and environmental and other types of stuff. Yeah.

[00:09:43] Sarah Stone: My brain's going mad now 'cause I'm thinking about retention metrics, for example.

[00:09:47] If you want to just understand the health of an organization, that's a really important one.

[00:09:52] Catherine Manning: That kind of thinking I've developed in part through listening to people LinkedIn with donor economics and there's the Wellbeing [00:10:00] Economy Alliance. So like Scotland, Wales, Iceland, New Zealand are all linked in being like we want to have and are actively working on wellbeing economies rather than.

[00:10:12] Just being sort of financially based economies and recognizing that sort of analogy, that it's like you wouldn't just have one metric to tell the health of anything else or the running of anything else. So why are we letting our economy just have these financial metrics as the things that tell us how are we doing?

[00:10:31] How are we doing as a nation?

[00:10:33] Sarah Stone: Yeah, you are right. You're right. Was it the Kingdom of Bhutan where they set the

[00:10:38] Catherine Manning: gross national happiness?

[00:10:40] Sarah Stone: That's it. Yeah. So they measure the economy not by GDP, but by GNH. Is that right?

[00:10:46] Catherine Manning: Yeah. And there's a few other ones of those where it's like, what could be like a national metric the we could use, I mean, it doesn't have to be, it's not like Chuck GDP away, but it's like, well, what's complimentary or what helps us [00:11:00] to, yeah.

[00:11:00] Sense check, you know, GDP through the roof, but because yeah, it's all compiled and these three people at the top have all of the money, but there's loads of money. Yeah. Yeah. Doing really well then, you know, it is. It doesn't tell you enough about where we are for us to be able to properly manage, particularly if we've got a view on we should.

[00:11:22] Aiming for reasonable levels of wellbeing for everyone.

[00:11:27] Sarah Stone: I couldn't read more. So when we talk about valuation of wellbeing or social value or social impact, how have you seen that the field change and the practice evolve over the years? You know, from when you first got involved, what kind of changes have you seen?

[00:11:41] Catherine Manning: Yeah, I've been thinking about this a little bit recently about the sort of changes in the, in the field and I suppose I haven't been here since the year doc sort of thing. I was on a social value International A GM yesterday, and they'll be celebrating during this year, 25 years of the movement. Wow.

[00:11:59] Yeah. [00:12:00] Which is amazing and I'm really looking forward to kind of. Reflecting on and hearing about that sort of progression over this 25 year period. But for me it was sort of mid 2010s. I joined and grew up, I suppose, in social value UK and Social Value International. But even at that point in time when I joined.

[00:12:21] Social value is still reasonably fringe, even though the social value act was in place. Yeah. You know, we only had a few councils

[00:12:29] Sarah Stone: using it though. It was still quite niche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

[00:12:33] Catherine Manning: sort of being in the networks at that point in time, I mean, I sort of caveat that with saying. One of my first meetings with the then chair of the Social Value International Board, he'd sort of said, well, welcome to the network that punches above its weight.

[00:12:47] And he was quite right and it, it was a lot of really dedicated and thoughtful people in a network who really cared about raising the voice of and [00:13:00] listening to the voice of the people who are most affected, but often most ignored, particularly when it comes to. Sort of social and environmental needs type stuff.

[00:13:10] It's like, oh, problem over there. We'll go and do this too. Not with, and not sort of led by the communities that know themselves better than anyone. Yeah. Yeah. And who's. Voice isn't valued. So yes. But the other thing then being this sort of thing where it's, I mean, the tagline of Social Value International, the mission is to change the way the world accounts for value and having lots of conversations with people being like, how do we make accounting interesting to people?

[00:13:39] Yeah. It's like people accept it as number one, that it's true financial accounting. Oh, it's true. It's set. It's done. I'd say true. And the second bit being, it's boring, you know? Yeah. Ugh, boring. Can't be bothered with that. Let the accountants do it and we just, that's mass the numbers and we all hate that.

[00:13:55] Exactly. And neither of those things are true. Right. It's, uh, we've made it up, we've made up [00:14:00] financial accounting and we can therefore change it and. Like it can be really exciting, like I'm not a hundred percent a numbers geek or anything like that, but the social accounting side, right where you pull in, we get to choose what's the material things that are important for this decision that we are trying to make, and that can include social things and different types of data and environmental stuff, and we can use it to make these better decisions.

[00:14:28] That's super exciting. But the things that I've seen change, I suppose, since then is. Things getting more formalized around social value practice. So more and more organizations are doing it. When you say they're doing it, you

[00:14:42] Sarah Stone: don't mean they're valuing their social impact. What they're doing is they're doing the other bit of social value, which is the application of it in procurement.

[00:14:51] So yes, you, we've been talking about the valuation of, and the measurement of, and metrics around social value, but there's [00:15:00] another part which is. Where the public sector says we want to spend public money wisely, and we want to spend it with suppliers that operate in a way that aligns with our values.

[00:15:09] And the way they do that is by putting social value. In the uk they call social value in. In other places they're called other things, but the uk, we call them social value requirements into contracts. And that is what has made it, if not mainstream, certainly within the fields where you and I work much more common, much more normal to people.

[00:15:26] So that kind of social value is. And then linking it with people's ESG activity. And obviously that's then driven the need for valuation because if you've got commitments in a contract and a procurer is going to want you to measure and report on those commitments. Mm-hmm. And that's where we've seen, I don't know that we could necessarily have predicted that that would be where it was gonna go 15 years ago.

[00:15:50] What are your kind of

[00:15:50] Catherine Manning: thoughts on that? You've captured exactly what I was alluding to there, that there's all these different bits of the practice, right? And in some ways you need the growth of it to [00:16:00] become, you know, more normalized for people. But it's sort of the versions of that within a procurement sense aren't necessarily.

[00:16:08] Capturing or allowing in the sort of practice that had been the type that I'd learned about when I'd first joined the network, right? Yeah. Where it's valuation from the perspective of the people who are experiencing the change in their lives now within, you know, a contracting sense or that making a bidding decision that's not necessarily the practice that you've got.

[00:16:30] The time, the resource. Even the ability to be able to put into place, you need something that's a lot more practical for that sort of decision. So it's very understandable that there's different versions of the practice that have developed for that particular use case. The issue is we haven't then figured out how to link that back through to.

[00:16:49] I suppose evidence rather than estimation of potential value. So in terms of the actual valuation practice that I've been seeing, [00:17:00] inevitably that's continuing to develop and change because social and environmental valuation are emerging fields. So there are different methods that people are trialing and testing out.

[00:17:13] And you know, there's some good lists out there like in the social value. Principles. There's standards for each of the principles. And principle three is value what matters. And there's a list of all the different valuation techniques in the back there. There's quite limited understanding of what all those different options are.

[00:17:31] There's,

[00:17:31] Sarah Stone: I'd like to talk a little bit about tools and digital tools 'cause there are now a lot of tools out there on the marketplace aren't there? Who will capture, track, measure, evaluate your social impact? How do tools fit into all of this?

[00:17:45] Catherine Manning: There is a reasonable sort of response to the need to track more data, right?

[00:17:51] Whether it's impact data or any other kind of data. We are getting more technologically advanced all of the time. You know, it's useful to be able to manage stuff within [00:18:00] software. We do it for HR or customer relationship management or anything else. So there's been a sort of proliferation and a growth of software companies that have developed an impact management piece of software.

[00:18:12] I mean, that's what my bread and butter. Jog does, you know, impact reporting have developed a piece of software that is to manage impact data. The thing that's also happened in this whole process though, is that organizations that have set up software platforms have also developed sets of proxy values in the main monetized values, which means that this bit around valuation of change in aspects of people's wellbeing.

[00:18:43] Has been linked through to, that means monetization, that means representing that in a monetized way. And the only way to be able to access these values and therefore do social value practice, is to get in [00:19:00] through one of the software platforms, right? Um, so you can't get your

[00:19:04] Sarah Stone: access to the values if you don't have a license for the software.

[00:19:08] Catherine Manning: Yeah. Yeah. In general, I mean, there's been bits and bobs where stuff has been released out into the the wild.

[00:19:16] Sarah Stone: And what are the, and what, this is not a stupid question. Why does it matter?

[00:19:19] Catherine Manning: Right. So from my perspective practitioner perspective, right? It matters for a number of reasons. One of them is that it is an emerging field, right?

[00:19:27] This practice is not set. If there's some values out there and people are saying, this is the true representation of this change, this social change, like being on an apprenticeship, reducing loneliness, improving health, getting a new car, improved transport, you know, this is the value of that for a person.

[00:19:49] And the claim with that proxy value is that that's a hundred percent true and that's the right one to use. I would question anybody who says that, Sarah, because it's emerging and there's a lot

[00:20:00] more assumption in there, and there's a lot more development of these different valuation approaches that's happening and that people need to know about to be able to judge.

[00:20:10] Is that a good representation of this? Potential value or not. So these values and the methodologies that underpin how they've been developed, being hidden behind paywalls is really bad for all of us as social value practitioners. Yeah, I mean, even the practitioners, right? We're really interested in this stuff.

[00:20:33] And do it every day. I love reading a big giant guide for how, you know, how, how boring other people might find it, but other people are just trying to get on with their blooming jobs and they're wearing 17 hats and one of them social value. Yeah. They want, they just want a

[00:20:48] Sarah Stone: figure. Yeah. So what,

[00:20:50] Catherine Manning: how am I supposed to know what the difference is between a wellbeing valuation and a cost replacement method and, oh, that's only counting.

[00:20:58] Cost savings to [00:21:00] the state, but this is, oh, that's actually about economic growth and oh God, this methodology says that I shouldn't be including local supply chain spend into my social value figures, but those people have got a giant figure over there, and they've included it in there even though someone else says it's economic value.

[00:21:17] Yeah. That's why it needs to be more transparent, because we need to clear. Yeah. What would you do if you could wave

[00:21:22] Sarah Stone: a magic wand? What would your solution be if there is a solution?

[00:21:25] Catherine Manning: I mean, look, one of the solutions that we've been working on is Measure Up. Measure Up. Yeah. One of the things that I would say is we have to do a lot more of this in the Open.

[00:21:35] We have to be more transparent about what we are doing. Don't just tell people what Measure Up is. It's a publicly available. Free to use valuation resource. And what I mean by that is that there is a website that's got a set of socially important and environmentally important activities. So things that we do and outcomes, things that [00:22:00] we experience a change in that we've done a bunch of research in the background to define.

[00:22:06] A reasonable Roxy value for that particular thing. So for example, reduced loneliness is worth a number of thousand pounds worth of wellbeing value to a person.

[00:22:20] Sarah Stone: And can you put these measures, if that's the right word for them, into any of those bits of software?

[00:22:25] Catherine Manning: Anyone can use them. So we've developed this in collaboration with state of life who are wellbeing evaluate and social value experts, and a company called PRD who are specialists in place development.

[00:22:38] So work with lots of like town councils and developers and things like that on strategy, development, and evaluation of the. Impact of developing good places, basically. And the three of us have come together and developed this resource and published it openly so anyone can use it as a sort of, let's stop doing this.

[00:22:57] Behind closed doors. Yeah. So you know, people [00:23:00] can have a go. They can break it. Yeah. They can tell us what's wrong. All of the research that's gone into developing the values, that's all based on openly available data sources. Like the UK is data rich, so Data rich, right. And like loads of the set. Of these values that are out there are based on things like ONS data and understanding society data.

[00:23:24] I mean, the other thing is based on research reports, right? So there's lots and lots of people who've done brilliant studies into loads of different things, although we've got something in there from the Good things Foundation, looking particularly around the impact and the value of getting better digital skills and being more digitally included.

[00:23:43] Right? And it's their report. It's their. Search. We've referenced all of where these things have come from, but we're trying to package it up in a way where it's like, for anyone that's trying to do social value valuation practice, the valuation [00:24:00] part of the practice, then here's an open. Available, please use it.

[00:24:05] Resource rather than that becoming the only part of the practice and the only way to do social value is to to access things behind closed doors. How

[00:24:15] Sarah Stone: many values have you got in there at the moment? Is it a work in progress? Are you building on it?

[00:24:20] Catherine Manning: It's a work in progress. We've got 26 published values at the moment.

[00:24:25] That's sort of what we are calling the bronze level. So the basic financial proxy level or value proxy level. There's a silver level where it's like each of those could get adjusted based on different demographic or experiential factors about the stakeholder group that you are talking about. And then gold level where.

[00:24:46] You actually get some evidence by talking directly to people to see if you know any value's been created or not. One of our founders will what at State of Life? He said one time said, well, if we're gonna claim that we've had an [00:25:00] impact on people's lives, I. We should at least have the courtesy to ask. Ask them.

[00:25:05] Yeah. Sounds like I'm like, he's very true. He's very true. Yeah. But yeah, we've just been developing our ideal value set and we've got around 70 values that we've identified, so we're going to. Write that up. We're sort of double checking it. We've got an advisory group, so we'll be taking this to them and then publishing that on the website so people can see the direction that we are going in and like hopefully feed in as well.

[00:25:32] 'cause we want this to be available for people, right? We want people to get engaged in valuation practice, like get your hands on it, have a go. Yeah. And part of that is you are all the experts in your areas that you do your work not. Me or anybody else who sat there doing the expert valuation practice, it's not for me to tell you that your program is really what value it's being created.

[00:25:55] This could be a good and useful resource, but if there's an area that people are think's [00:26:00] really important, it's like we work in arts and culture and we know this is so important for people and for their lives. And this value that we've got around attending cultural events, it's like a good starting point, but it's pretty basic from, you know, experts in that area's perspective.

[00:26:17] They're like, we could do some research together. Or there's this other report that says that value's created in X, Y, and Z way. You know, so trying bring it all together, pull all together. Yeah. Want people to share that stuff with us, Sarah, so that, you know, I just, it becomes a growing resource for everyone.

[00:26:33] Sarah Stone: Yeah. Well, we'll put a link in the show notes. For anyone who's interested and definitely recommend people look at that. Mm-hmm. And just thinking about procurement and the use of social value in procurement, do you have a view on financial, what is your view on financial proxies being used in procurement as a way of quantitatively evaluating a supplier social value offer?

[00:26:52] Because I mean, mainly this is local government, obviously, central government are really clear that social value should not be evaluated [00:27:00] quantitatively. By that we mean they are going to look at what you are doing, not how much of it or what the social pound proxy financial value you're gonna say it's worth is.

[00:27:10] And they're gonna make their decision based on how well what you offer meets their requirements and their criteria. I mean, local government, every local authority does it differently, don't they? But you do see in local government a lot more emphasis placed on counting proxy financial values. And I just wonder what your thought was about that as a practice.

[00:27:28] Catherine Manning: It's not just central government that have said, you know, don't use monetized values. I mean, there's a similar piece of policy in Scottish procurement. Yes. And that specifically says, do not monetize as well. Now what do I think of it? I think I suppose the same, that I think with any other version of sort of monetized valuation, if it's useful.

[00:27:52] Then that's a good reason to do it. But if it's not, don't do it. And what I mean by that [00:28:00] is that the values, just because it's got a pound sign on, it doesn't mean it, it's more meaningful in describing what that's supposed to represent. Yeah. Only if you understand what it's relate. Yeah, that's true. And what's,

[00:28:15] Sarah Stone: I'm always really suspicious when I see really high value figures attached to social value creation, but sometimes things that are worth a lot to people aren't worth a lot in money.

[00:28:24] They can be very cheap, you know, so you can do something inexpensive and it can be highly valuable to the recipient.

[00:28:31] Catherine Manning: That's where the social value valuation piece should be useful, right? Because we are not talking about financial value, we are talking about bringing visibility to the stuff that isn't financially valued.

[00:28:46] So like you say, it might be, it's actually super cheap. We put on a coffee morning in the local community group every Wednesday morning, and all of the local people who've got at-home [00:29:00] care responsibilities come down the rooms for free costs 20 pounds a week for some tea, coffee, and a bit cake. That group of people say this has.

[00:29:11] Increased my connection to others who've got a similar situation. To me, it's increased my support network. It's reduced my loneliness, and that's worth to me a lot more than the equivalent of 10,000 pounds worth of more income. And that's where it can bring some visibility to something that isn't. It's not the 20 pound fee to buy some coffee and cake or even represented by 20 people come every week, and therefore it's a good networking group and it creates some impact.

[00:29:46] It's the representation of that change, and that's where the valuation piece can actually help. To show you, you, it's like this is worth this amount to this group of people. This is such an

[00:29:58] Sarah Stone: important point. I haven't thought [00:30:00] about it like this before, and I think the reason I haven't thought about this before is 'cause people don't use it like that.

[00:30:03] They don't use it like that full stop. They just say The coffee morning's worth 10,000 pounds, or we created 10,000 pounds or so value. Aren't we wonderful? You know what I mean? They don't say, oh, we could have organized a. Virtual, whatever, coffee morning. But we didn't, 'cause we realized that was only worth 50 quid.

[00:30:19] And so we realized that one was way more impactful. So that

[00:30:22] Catherine Manning: was a really,

[00:30:23] Sarah Stone: really good point. Well, or

[00:30:23] Catherine Manning: example, Sarah, that online version you might be delivering, like what feels like exactly the same service. And in some ways it is. But it misses out the bit that everybody actually valued. The bit that was so important to people.

[00:30:40] It wasn't sitting, having a chat and having the cup of coffee, that was really great, but it was being there in person. Yeah. And seeing people in person getting out of the house, having some me time, you know? Yeah. And if that was taken away. By delivering what's essentially the same service but in a different way.

[00:30:58] You know? And you're like, yeah, but [00:31:00] everybody still came so we can still count the number of people and I can still use the proxy value. Yeah. That was assigned to it and said, ran coffee morning. Therefore this amount of social value created, it's like, it's not trying to show the value of doing the activity.

[00:31:19] It's supposed to be helping us to bring visibility to the changes that are being experienced and how valuable they are to the people who are experiencing them. And I think that's, and inform our decision making

[00:31:32] Sarah Stone: based on that. But I think that's the fundamental problem with a lot of tools is that the financial proxy value that's assigned to the thing isn't.

[00:31:42] Nobody goes and asks the people that go through the coffee morning what they think and what changes. They make assumptions. They take data sense, like we've just been explaining there's so many out there and use those. It sounds like I'm being critical because there's no perfect way to do this is that, you know, it's just part of the problem, right?

[00:31:57] There's this disconnect between the changes that people [00:32:00] actually experience and the changes that are being credited for the assumptions that are

[00:32:03] Catherine Manning: being made. And I suppose, you know, that might be good enough, right? If you're at a certain part of your planning or your delivery of certain sets of activities, right?

[00:32:12] Like using those proxy values at the beginning to help to estimate, we are going to put a load of time and resource into running this particular activity. So we'll stick with the coffee morning thing, you know, local community group. Money in gonna keep on running it, need person to run it. So that's a lot of effort, right?

[00:32:32] So let's say we run it for six months. Here's a proxy value that we could say this has the potential to be able to create this amount of value. If we get 20 people in the room, and if we run it weekly, there's a really good estimate to say, right planning, doing right. Okay. But at some point in that process.

[00:32:55] We might think it's useful for us to check if any of this has actually [00:33:00] happened, and not just check that the group has run. But is it actually any good for people? Do they want it like this? So if we'd started off online, it's like, yeah, it's really nice meeting people, but we'd like to meet in person. You know, it's like there's a really good change.

[00:33:16] There's the management piece, and then if we're just wanting to count at the end or sort of show evaluation wise. What's this done? Has it been any good? The problem we've got with the financial proxies is that people use that same proxy at the end to say delivered the thing, therefore created this value.

[00:33:37] Yes. Rather than looking for. Better evidence of whether any of the change actually took place. And then using that to be able to calculate a value, they use the sort of financial comparison again, right? If we were setting a budget at the beginning of the year or forecast next year, this is our budget for each of our.

[00:33:59] [00:34:00] Departments, that's the forecast of profit and loss and whatever. We wouldn't get to the end of the year and just look back at the budget or the forecast and say, oh, that's what we did, because we'll just use the same measures. We check what actually happened, what did we actually spend? What was our actual profit loss?

[00:34:18] Yeah, you're right. We do a forecast and then we do an actual, and then we compare them

[00:34:21] Sarah Stone: actual. Yeah.

[00:34:21] Catherine Manning: Yeah. And we don't do that with social value. Valuation or even environmental valuation, I'm sure maybe a bit more with environmental valuation, but we should have that same man mentality. It's not wrong to estimate, but let's not pretend that we are not estimating

[00:34:36] Sarah Stone: SROI forecasting you.

[00:34:37] Do you have that forecasting? Piece where you do the forecast, right? And then you do the study and then you look at where you were on your forecast to get your fine figure. But I know what you mean. Are there any kind of like anything exciting happening in this space? Any emerging trends? What's changing, what's gonna happen in, I think in 2025?

[00:34:55] Second sort of question linked to it is do you think that there'll be any more, any regulation or any [00:35:00] policy around social value reporting?

[00:35:02] Catherine Manning: In terms of sort of trends or exciting things that are happening, like obviously working on Measure Up. So that's my example of sort of more transparent valuation practice, but it's in a trend.

[00:35:13] I'm seeing more and more of that happening at a UK level, but probably more at an international level at this point in time. So the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts, it's long snappy titles in this space that's come out of like Harvard Business School's impact weighted accounts. Project and program of work and their publishing value factors.

[00:35:34] There's an open social value bank being developed in the us. There was one that's been published in Denmark. There's some other sort of valuation type bodies and experts that have come together and that there's a few consultancies or sort of proprietary business type organizations that are coming together and saying, well, look.

[00:35:53] For the betterment of the practice in the space, we are going to publish these things openly. One of those [00:36:00] gist, impact. So that sort of stuff, I'm really excited about Sarah because I think it's super important and it's a trend, right? So we need to start valuing stuff more in the open and that'll give people the opportunity to be able to critique.

[00:36:17] Constructively, you know, understand what these things mean a little bit more. And for all of us with the practice to get better and find, well, what's actually most useful for us to be able to make better decisions in terms of regulation. This can't be unlinked from broader sort of sustainability trends.

[00:36:34] So, you know, for this. Country. We're not in the EU anymore. Yeah. But we are still in Europe. Yeah. And, uh, lots of our companies that are here do interact in Europe as well. So, you know, the CSRD and the ESRS standards, those are all coming into play well into this coming year. So incrementally that'll be influencing what companies have to [00:37:00] report on.

[00:37:00] Yeah. I've just done a

[00:37:01] Sarah Stone: piece of work on that actually on, like looking at, um, researching what's. Being asked, and it's fascinating. It's, but also it's super

[00:37:08] Catherine Manning: interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It makes

[00:37:09] Sarah Stone: you realize why people that sit in ESG are, it's huge. It's huge. Absolutely.

[00:37:14] Catherine Manning: Yeah. Real alphabet soup. I know. Oh, but just one thing specifically for social value, there is an ISO coming out.

[00:37:23] It's not specifically social value titled, it's more sustainability management titled. Right. But it's gonna be. Really important. Right? Like and loads of people are, are much more a sort of with getting up to particular ISO standard, it, yeah. This links in a lot with another area that I'm working in, which surround the UNDP, sustainable development goals, impact practice standards.

[00:37:47] So yeah. These are practice standards for embedding good impact practice into your organizations, the running and management of your organizations. But this ISO is gonna be really linked to those [00:38:00] standards

[00:38:00] Sarah Stone: and what's it called, and when's it coming out? Do you know? It's during this year. Find out and you can send it to me afterwards and we'll pop it in the notes and the link for the episode.

[00:38:09] What advice would you give someone who's just starting out, maybe just starting to explore social value management or has been doing it for a while, but is kind of thinking, oh, I need to know more about this stuff. Is there any training?

[00:38:19] Catherine Manning: Yeah, so I mean, what my starting point is social value International and there's the Institute for Social Value in the uk and they have sort of introduction to social value sessions, which are really useful.

[00:38:32] There are some good sort of smaller, independent sort of bodies and organizations that do training. So CHI Consulting have got some training courses. Yes. Very good actually. Social value. Yeah, they're really, really good. I mean the supply chain sustainability school, if you're in sort of built environment and supply chain management, you know, they've got some really good resources and we've been working quite a bit with social value business who.

[00:38:57] Work on or have a sort of [00:39:00] partnership with the social value quality mark, which is a mm-hmm. Management of social value from an organizational perspective, sort of accreditation scheme. So they've got quite a lot of like training type resources. We are continuing to try to release helpful resources and webinars through Measure Up as well.

[00:39:19] We're gonna have one on stakeholder engagement and in Greater Manchester there's the Greater Manchester Social Value Network and the gm. Growth Hub or business growth hub, and they run social value sessions as well. Final one, ICRS. They are starting to do more around social value and I think importantly, like you say for ESG type professionals or broader sustainability professionals that be coming from that perspective of how does this sit within this broader but very cross.

[00:39:51] Over. Yeah. Professions, you know, sustainability, CSR, environmental, professional climate change, all of these [00:40:00] different things and social value or impact management in the middle of that as well. So I'd look out for, or connecting to that network too.

[00:40:08] Sarah Stone: That's super helpful. Thank you so much and thank you of your time.

[00:40:10] It's been Absolutely. I could talk to you all day. Yeah, I would love

[00:40:14] Catherine Manning: to. I'd love to stay and carry on this conversation. Sarah, I feel like we've scratched the surface. Oh, listen, thank you very much. It's been absolutely brilliant. Yeah. Thank you, Sarah. What a pleasure.

[00:40:24] Sarah Stone: I'm Sarah Stone, and you've been listening to Let's Talk Social Value.

[00:40:27] You can find all our previous episodes on our website or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you found this useful, then please do share the episode with your networks and consider leaving us a review. I'd love to know what you think of that episode, so please reach out to me and let me know.

[00:40:42] You can find me on LinkedIn or contact me on our website, www.samtaler.co uk. See you next time.