Can social impact really be measured? Really?

Can social impact really be measured?

I've been thinking about Rob Edwards' comment on my last blog and have decided it deserves a blog of its own. In his response Rob, reflecting on Magic Breakfast's call for investment of £13 million in a social impact bond that offers £28 million in savings from the additional Government expenditure needed to address the social problems of children too hungry to learn, Rob said, "This is the whole problem with social enterprise. The returns can be somewhat ephemeral, and an awful lot of time and money goes into setting up organisations rather than actually delivering services that people want."


Is this the case? Is measuring social impact ephemeral and therefore too academic to bring into a discussion about investment? Can social enterprises miss the point and make an offer that is not really what people want?


Clearly some people think so and if we are to make any real progress, we have to address these criticisms, and not just by refuting them from the vantage point of the moral high ground, but by generating the data that proves our services are needed and our social return has been critically assessed and properly measured.  


Just after the election I had a meeting with the man put in charge of regeneration in a major Government department, he asked me, "How do we create regeneration and cut spending?"

I advised introducing social impact assessment across the whole department and insisting that the impact of cuts were assessed for their wider social impact and concomitant cost before decisions are made about what stays and what goes. Needless to say he didn't, or couldn't, follow my advice, but I am sticking to my guns, because despite a slow start, members of the Government namely, Nick, Hurd, Francis Maude, Ken Clarke, George Osborne and the Prime Minister himself have shown growing enthusiasm for social impact bonds making this an ideal time to take out the tape measure.


I do appreciate this is not easy. When I started looking into impact measurement I too was baffled and because I found it tough, I made sure SEL had the brains to work it out with people on the team like Ali Somers who devised the first social value balance score card and went on to head up the social impact unit at Goldsmiths. Also, Sabina Khan came to us from the impact assessment team in Lehman Brothers in New York and has since founded the world's leading Social Enterprise Journal, developed  SEL's SIMPLE programme – our how-to guide to assessing which tool is right for you – and launched our fantastically popular Introduction to social impact assessment training. Because SEL has been developing tools with real social enterprises working on the ground, often in the most difficult circumstances, we have come up with solutions that work for busy social entrepreneurs not just academic exercises. The goal has been to move social enterprise from being characterised as warm, fuzzy charity to one where hard evidence shows how it really works.


As times get tougher, the clamour for evidence will get louder. Occupying the moral high ground with its stunning views no longer guarantees any of us a future. Being able to produce data about the exact cost of your product or service and measure its impact will give you future contracts, boost your bottom line and ensure you offer services that, as Rob recommends, "people want". I know because we have done it at SEL and it really, really works, honest Rob.

As Ye Sow, so shall ye reap

Todays budget was billed by Chancellor, George Osborne as the blueprint for "Start up Britain".

Losing child benefit: A back to work tax?

On this morning's breakfast news the Chancellor, George Osborne announced that as of 2013 child benefit would no longer be awarded to those who earn over £44k. In the sea of bad news this may not seem like a biggy but my first thought was, another few thousand working women bite the dust.

Child benefit is unique in the UK as the only benefit paid primarily to women. Feminists like Eleanor Rathbone campaigned at the turn of the century for women with children to be supported directly and for any tax credit or allowance not to be awarded through the tax system where they might not see the benefit. In 1977 that lobby got their wish through the introduction of child benefit. I hope the new measures will not revert to tax credits paid to the principal wage earner as again women are likely to lose out.

In removing child benefit from middle earners this new measure goes to the heart of everything I have been saying about social value. If you start by trying to save money without examining social impact you run the risk of spending more in the long run.

When I had my eldest and was returning to work the difference between my salary after tax and childcare costs was not much more than child benefit. By the time I had 3 children under school age and a staggering childcare bill, the accumulated child benefit made a real difference. You might argue that it was our choice to have the children, and so close together, and you would be right, but nonetheless if the economy is to repair itself it needs people, and that includes mothers, even fecund ones, to go to work.

You might also argue that with two earners we are in a privileged position, and again you would be right. But my point is, at the time it was tough, and I kept thinking if its tough for us how do people manage whose finances are more acute? I think £44k as the threshold is too low. An average inner London full time nursery place costs over £11k after tax (Daycare Trust 2009). A household earning £44k will have roughly £33k after tax from which you will have to find around £11k for childcare and an average travel cost of a further £1300. As things stand many women do the maths and fail to return to work, or sadly, decide to put off having children. A recent survey carried out by Mumpoll and reported by The Mail found 8 out of 10 women surveyed were putting off having children because it was too expensive. If you take the £1055 that child benefit for the first child gives you it can make a big difference, in any event this is, in my view a return to work tax, directly withdrawing financial support to a potentially productive but beleaguered group, your ‘average working Mum’.

This is to say nothing of the profound inequality for single parents who don't have a second wage coming in but could lose the benefit regardless of the extent of their childcare responsibilities. Will they work I wonder?

I suppose my point is this: We need mothers and single parents to work and should be encouraging them to do so. This might be counter productive and as such end up costing us more because fewer workers means fewer tax payers etc.

More or less of the heroics?

The Tory Summit organised by Acevo on Thursday was great. We had an impressive procession of shadow ministers over the course of the day including George Osborne, Francis Maude, Oliver Letwin and Nick Hurd. They each highlighted different areas of consuming interest to us in the third sector, particularly around procurement, payment by results, right to request and social impact measurement and reporting. I didn’t agree with everything said but I did manage to blog most of it as it was happening.

Getting important public statements out onto a public platform in real time felt new and exciting, even if my right hand did ache with the frenetic typing. I was therefore chuffed when my efforts were described as 'heroic' in the Guardian blog the next day.

In the session I participated in I was asked to comment on social impact measurement which I hope I did coherently. It’s such a complex field to deliver in sound bites, and I think Phillip Hammond got the wrong end of the stick when he came back on my point, with a sense that what social enterprises need are two forms of contract, one for the things they make and sell (their economic return) and another for the jobs, training and opportunities they create (their social impact). No Phillip, two forms of procurement? I don’t think so. What is required are effective and clear social impact clauses in all contracts. Perhaps they should all come to a SEL event on same to bottom out the principles?

Still I thought it went well. They seemed keen, and more to the point they seemed organised and briefed which makes for altogether a better conversation.

Since then I have had some really interesting discussions with Asheem Singh, Deputy Director at ResPublica, Phillip Blond's think tank about new horizons for social enterprise. We both agreed that education will be the brave new frontier and that the SEL conference on education is well timed. The event should be a real groundbreaker. It’s on April 15th at RBS Headquarters on Bishopsgate. Speakers include Sir Michael Wilshaw the remarkable head of one of the UK’s leading schools, Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, and Paul Mason, who runs the Parent Promoted Foundation. If social enterprise in the education context is on your agenda then do come along. Tickets are available through the SEL website in the usual way. Or you can email me direct.

I should apologise for my unusual quietness on the blog front. I have been spending all my spare minutes painting my house. I started in the hall, but it’s turning out a bit like the Forth Bridge: each freshly painted room makes the one next to it look rather shabby. I will put up some more before and after shots when I have a moment. Now that piece of work is turning out to be heroic. I just hope I can get the house back to some kind of order before I head off to Tokyo on Friday to talk to a symposium about social enterprise.

I must sign off, I’m due at the House of Commons to meet with Vince Cable in 30 minutes. I am looking forward to it. He was so lovely when we shared a podium in November and seemed to have a real interest in social enterprise, not least because, as he explained, his son is a social entrepreneur.

Osborne says yes to third sector offer

Stephen Bubb made a barnstorming opening speech at the Tory Summit today offering a new Government a third sector ready to marshall communities and deliver public services.

In response the Shadow Chancellor says, on behalf of the Tories, he accepts the offer. What can we expect from them? He tells us professional commissioning, competent procurement, and payment by results on defined outcomes. He goes on to explain the benefit of payment by results is you can see the benefits and savings. We want to talk to you, he says, about how we can get this going, get the Social Investment Bank and investment bonds going. "The other thing you can expect from us are longer term contracts, such as in Welfare to work we will offer 5 year contracts." "What you won't get from us, is bureaurocracy or a demand for National standards for everything." "What do we expect from you?" Osborne posed. "Delivering to scale, professionalism, and value for money more specifically greater productivity than we have had from the public sector." His final point is that he does not want the sector to be suffocated by big Goverment. "Its your challenge to resist that and ours to prevent it."