If you are a voluntary and community group, organisation, or social enterprise, you are probably creating social value every day.
Social value is more than the outcomes (short-term difference) and impacts (longer-term difference) your group makes, and extends beyond what is paid for as part of a service by a funder. It is more than ‘value’ in the financial sense, as it seeks to define value in the wider social, environmental and economic impacts of your work.
Social value is about how your group creates additional benefits for the local community as part of its existing work. For example, developing skills which enable people to get into employment, using local suppliers to support the local economy, looking after the spaces around your building to improve the environment and offering volunteering opportunities for local people or your staff.
But how do you capture what the social value of your activity or services are? How can you communicate this to your members, funders and the public and how can you create more social value
There are lots of simple steps your group can take to learn more about social value, explore what you can do to create more and find out what others are doing to increase their social value in Bolton and beyond. You can:
Sign up to the Bolton Social Value Commitment.
Show how your group or organisation will deliver social value by adopting a Social Value Policy. This policy has been designed for you to adapt and contains some simple examples that you can use to maximise the social value you deliver.
To speak to one of our team about how we can support your group to improve or measure your impact and social value, contact Bolton CVS at info@boltoncvs.org.uk.
