Make An Impact Podcast
Make An Impact Podcast
Rethinking Value: Beyond Financial Metrics
Catherine Manning joins us for a paradigm-shifting conversation about how we define, measure, and create value in our world. As Head of Impact Practice at Impact Reporting and Programme Director of Measure Up, Catherine brings a wealth of expertise in translating abstract impact concepts into practical frameworks that organisations can actually implement.
The episode challenges our society's overreliance on financial metrics as the primary decision-making tool. Catherine eloquently argues that while financial accounting isn't inherently flawed, it fails to capture the full spectrum of value – our relationships, health, connection to nature, and overall wellbeing. "The judgment of how well you're doing comes down to the financial assessment," she notes, "and it misses out so much of what the purpose and value actually are."
We explore how social value measurement is evolving beyond mere compliance with procurement requirements. Catherine shares her vision where organisations move from "ticking boxes" to embedding social value in their DNA – transforming it from a short bus journey to a meaningful ongoing commitment. This shift requires both structural changes in how we account for value and cultural changes in how we perceive success.
The conversation illuminates the ground breaking work of Measure Up, which demystifies social value measurement by providing accessible, transparent tools for practitioners. Their innovative approach offers graded measurement levels (bronze, silver, gold) that acknowledge different organizational capacities while encouraging progress. "Part of the point of publishing this is to take the mystique away," Catherine explains, "It's your value, not the expert's."
Whether you're a seasoned impact professional or just beginning to explore how your work creates change, this episode offers both philosophical insights and practical approaches to measuring what truly matters. By reimagining our systems of value, we open possibilities for a more equitable, sustainable future where economic activities serve human and environmental wellbeing rather than the reverse.
Subscribe now to continue exploring how we can collectively make an impact that transcends financial bottom lines and creates meaningful, lasting change in our communities.
Hi, I'm Heidi Fisher, the host of the Make an Impact Podcast. I'm an impact measurement expert, passionate about helping you make a bigger impact in the world by maximising the impact your services have.
I can help you to measure, manage and communicate the impact you have better to funders, investors, commissioners and other stakeholders, and to systemise your data collection and analysis so that it frees up time and doesn't become an additional burden.
I love helping you to measure social and economic impacts, including Social Return on Investment or value for money assessments, as part of understanding the change you make to peoples' lives.
You can get in touch via LinkedIn or the website makeanimpactcic.co.uk if you'd like to find out more about working with me.
Welcome to Make an Impact podcast, where we dive deep into the stories, strategies and solutions that drive real change. I'm Heidi Fisher and I work with organizations on a mission to tackle poverty, reduce health inequalities and create lasting social impact. In each episode, I bring you inspiring conversations with changemakers, social entrepreneurs and thought leaders who are making a difference. Whether you're looking to boost your impact measurement, learn from innovative projects or find fresh ideas to transform your work, you're in the right place. Welcome to today's episode of the Make an Impact podcast. Today, I'm joined by Catherine. Catherine, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you're up to these days?
Speaker 2:Sure. Thank you, heidi, it's great to be here with you. My name is Catherine Manning and my day job is as head of impact practice at a company called Impact Reporting, who are a software tech company that offer a SaaS platform for managing impact data. And then one of my other hats as a program director of Measure Up, which is a project or program of work that Impact Reporting has been developing alongside co-partners, state of Life and PRD, and I'm the one that wrangles all of the partners together to create this social and environmental measurement and valuation resource that we released to the world in October last year and are still working on. And then the final role that's probably useful to notice is that I'm a board member on the Board of Trustees for Social Value International, the international standard setter and membership body for the principles and the practice behind social value accounting.
Speaker 1:Fabulous. Thank you, Catherine. I don't know when you get time to sleep with all those activities.
Speaker 2:I just do all these things. I never said to what quality I do them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know that it's a very good quality. There's definitely a theme to all of those things around impact reporting and impact measurement and data. So what got you into the world of impact?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question really. I suppose when I've tried to describe my career over the years, I think of it as quite a wiggly, snake-like road that goes through a lot of different things and all through my life I've just wanted to do something where I'm helping, which is incredibly broad. When I was younger, university-wise, I was looking at anthropology and religion and then into international development. I worked for some charities. I worked for some charities, I worked for some universities, did some research in public sector bodies and then was about 12, 17. I've been living down in London for a while. I'm a northerner by heart. It's time to shift. I'm going to go back up to my roots and I'm going to find the thing, that where I'm going to help.
Speaker 2:And I landed in social value what was Social Value UK at the time and Social Value International and kicked off my official impact in social value life from there onwards.
Speaker 2:And it really spoke to me almost immediately where there's always been this issue around, no matter what you're trying to do, and it can be with the best purpose.
Speaker 2:It could be activism or campaigning or direct delivery to answer a social or environmental issue and there was always this thing where the judgment of how well you were doing came down to the financial assessment, whichever way you do that the budget, the cost, the benefits, the profit and loss and it missed out so much of what the purpose and the value of all of these things actually are and what they mean to all of us and how we should prioritize and allocate resources to the different things that we do, prioritize and allocate resources to the different things that we do, and it really felt to me like social value and that the version of social value practice and accounting that I started learning about and still believe in it really addressed that point or aims to address that point. So we have to have this broader idea and understanding of what value is and bring more visibility to it and really use that to drive our decision making If we want to have a more equal, more fair, more socially and environmentally beneficial and integrated future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we'd all sign up to that in terms of a more fairer society. In there, you talk about not making decisions based purely on finances and incorporating the things that matter to people. What do you consider are the things that matter to people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, there's a good question as well, heidi. I suppose at the broadest level, it would be the things that matter to us, that slaughter, the stuff that impacts on our well-being. Now there's a big question I think that we could spend this whole time talking about and, I suppose, just debate about this as well. But I'd also signify separate out the environment and nature and our connection to the environment and nature, reconnecting. There's so many ways that that people have ended up being separated out from the natural world that we are a part of. And then, under the well-being part itself, there's's objective or material type things. We do live in a society that's managed primarily through financial means. So our own financial assets, our own financial management, the economy itself, they do matter. But I think the stuff that we do, what we're working on, and the quality of our work, the activities that we do volunteering, sport, hobbies, that sort of stuff the quality of our health mental and physical and everything that fits underneath those, then also some of the more subjective things, right, the state and quality of our relationships with one another, how we feel, how well do we think we are, how optimistic are we about the future, all of these sorts of things. I'd say they all matter and we all know that they matter, because that's the stuff when you talk to the people that you care about.
Speaker 2:You don't sit there and talk about well for my day to day, unless you're a trader in the city.
Speaker 2:Perhaps you do, but you wouldn't say what's my profit and loss from today or from this week You'd be talking about.
Speaker 2:Well, I got excited about this project that I'm doing at work, or I've had this challenging issue with my family members, or we had an amazing with the dog in this beautiful area that we live in all those things that actually really matter to us.
Speaker 2:But the thing that gets counted the most methodically leads to all the decision making about the stuff that we do, where we allocate our resources, who gets us access to all of the different assets and all of these things that actually matter to us primarily gets decided on the financial bottom line, and to me, yeah, it seems like we need to flip that, and we could also debate whether we should carry on with the financial and the money piece as the way of the deciding factor, and the money piece is the way it's a deciding factor, but at very least I think it needs to become believer towards achieving or deciding on the resource allocation to be able to create the kind of social circumstances and environmental circumstances that we all want, that we all should deserve, that we should have equal access to, not the financial part being the end goal in and of itself, irrespective of the social and environmental consequences so that's a big challenge in there, man, yeah no nothing's small, nothing's no just is part of that changing the way we account for value, so changing how like me as an old traditional accountant having to do balance sheets and profits and loss do you see that they're?
Speaker 1:they're out of date, they're out of touch with reality, or is there still a place for them? I'm not going to share my opinion on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's sort of two sides to my opinion. There's the bit of me that goes break it all, burn it all down, change everything immediately. The bit of me that's doing all the kinds of work that I do, the impact measurement and management work that I would be supporting day to day with the set of clients and network that we're a part of. Sure, impact reporting and all of the work and effort that we've put into to measure up the partners and the wonderful advisory group like yourself by day, all of the people starting to use it. That is more about incremental change to exactly what you say we've got. We're very good at methodically counting some of the value and that's been primarily around the stuff that's got monetary figures associated with it. And we've got this set of agreed-upon standards that say what should go into this set of financial accounts or company accounts or charity accounts, what should go in and what shouldn't, and, reasonably well, people abide by that, apart from when there's the big scandals, but we don't get into those and that allows us to have confidence in those data sets and use that for decision making. It's not wrong or bad.
Speaker 2:I suppose the thing that I've realized through this work more is that it's also not true or set. It's something that a load of people have spent a lot of time on and made up and we can edit it and say we recognize that there are other things that are valuable and we can include them in this set of data, that we've got these set of metrics and we can put the processes in place to include that in our organizational or societal or policy government-related decision-making organizational or societal or policy government related decision making. And that's the bit I don't. I'm not I won't be coming out with my pitchfork and to say burn it all down, but I do think that there needs to be more change and the ability to be able to move accounting forward to be fit for purpose.
Speaker 2:So the world that we live in now because it's not right that so many things that are incredibly valuable to us, both positively and negatively, are just deemed immaterial to organization or at all levels, up to government levels, up to international levels of decision making and therefore environmental, social consequences of the things that we do just get left out of the decision making, beyond the more subjective versions of these things being included, where you've got some really brilliant people who are doing some amazing things to be like right. We as a company or a charity or a government, we commit to sustainability or well-being or quality of work for people within our organization, whatever their thing is that they're passionate about at that time, but it's not recognized as a part of our methodical data gathering and decision making to the same degree that the finances are, and it's yeah. I think there's so much more to be done to be able to shift that along. Yes, I'm not going to say throw the finances away, but I do think allowing ourselves and let's galvanize some radical accountant yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I call myself a retired accountant these days, although I still have my membership. But I do always remember this joke that I was told years ago about accountants, where they joke about what number do you want me to make it? Because within the standards that an accountant can make your accounts to whatever number you want to, to a certain degree it's not to say that you could have magically go from a huge loss to massive profits unless there was something that that could be in the accounts. But it's always that idea that it's open to interpretation and that it can be altered to present a different perspective or view based on what's allowable within those standards. It should lead me nicely on to talking to you about standards around impact measurements. So what's your view around standards on impact measurement and management?
Speaker 2:Interestingly, just at this point in time, I'm just about to go sign tomorrow on the snappily titled UNDP, sdg Impact Practice Standards Train the Trainer course. It's being run through Social Value International and the train the trainer course. It's being run through social value international and the undp, so it's a great time to be talking about practice standards. Yeah, I'm a big believer in the need for and purpose of developing standards and practice for those of us that are doing this impact measurement and management or social value practitioner or SROI or ESG, even practice that sort of all gets bundled in to varying degrees together. Where are we at with the standards? The primary set that I still adhere, to fall back on, is the principles, principles of social value. I find them incredibly helpful as a sense check, even if it's just like just having the eight of spilling around, floating around by your head or on a list. You're like, oh, okay, okay, we want to figure out what's happening because of our volunteering program that's going on at work. It's like okay, principle one says evolve stakeholders and it's like, okay, who are stakeholders? Well, it's probably the volunteers, probably the organisations that are being volunteered with, probably the rest of the staff within the company if people are getting, having led the people leaving work and the rest of the staff are being left to deal with that. It helps you to then identify the things that would be useful to fit into any version of social value or impact measurement, the bit that I'm really interested in.
Speaker 2:So I've worked at Social Value UK and Social Value International for many years moving into impact reporting. I thought a little bit of that move, a bit of it was put the money where the mouth is, let's say so. I'd spent quite a lot of time at SBUK and SBI around the assurance and accreditation services for quite a long time. So it was looking at these standards of practice in relation to practitioners practice or reports or the certification for organizations, practice, and it was like you give me some evidence and I'll make so. It will the process not mean individually will make a judgment on where this is at in relation to that standard. Going into impact reporting, it's more you know what's this organization trying to do and what they got the skills, experience, resources to be able to do at this point in time, instead of this nudge towards these standards that are due, adhere to and believe in. So I suppose where I'm at in terms of the standards is that there's a lot more organisations that are trying to do the practice, that are in this messy pot the more where the practitioners, let's say, or the standard setters say, if you're doing the practice, you should do this and this, all in this row. That's the way it should happen.
Speaker 2:I'm enjoying and also puzzled by and trying to figure out, I suppose, the things that measure up work right. How do we put into play reasonable and achievable steps to go from, let's say, like not measuring or managing any of your social and environmental impact, up to doing something that could be judgeable in relation to some of these sets of standards, like social value principles, for one, and now, obviously, putting myself into this course around the SDG impact practice standards. That's another set and that's really focused on the management of your, as you get these different bits of data about your social and environmental impacts. What are you going to do with that? How are you going to drive decision making and this sort of thing? And yeah, I'm. I think we're in a space where it's great to see that more. I do think it's great to see that more work's going in to the standards of the practice. I still think there's a huge amount of work to be done in terms of translating that into actionable practice that organizations actually put into place. Some of that is going to come down to the fact that the majority of these different standards are still voluntary. The financial ones aren't, so there's a good comparison, I say.
Speaker 2:In the UK we've got a really interesting development of this practice, let's say, and where we are in terms of the marketplace or the industry of social value and impact management practice, in that we've had this legislative driver through the Social Value Act and procurement, which has led to lots of people having to respond, particularly around requirements in public sector procurement and meeting those commitments that you put into place and that sort of thing where the standards, where a set of standards or standardization of practice could really help, is helping us to stop doing everything in really varied ways and being more transparent about what those varied ways are and steadily start to take steps closer to an externally verifiable standard or place where different reports and sets of data evidence could be reported to and made publicly available, because there's just there's so much variety there and I think that's needed because we're still figuring out the practice.
Speaker 2:But we do need this separate pot and that's where I think the standards, assurance, verification can really assist us. Yeah, I think we're at a time, certainly within the UK, where it's really necessary for that pot to develop more more systemically, be more available for people, so that we can take the next step in the practice that we're doing in this country yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:I think there's so many people that are now social value practitioners that have has partly come about through the legislation and the fact that it's in public benefits mentioned in the new procurement act and things that. But do you think that the New Procurement Act is a game changer for social value or is it still very much a tick box exercise?
Speaker 2:I suppose time will tell, heidi. I still believe that public sector procurement has the potential to be an incredible lever for directing resources towards the stuff that really could benefit society and the environment. How that plays out, we've already seen with the previous legislation that it can be incredibly varied. From what I've engaged with so far with the new MPPS, the National Procurement Policy Statement and the new version of the social value model, there's some good stuff in there. There's some good things in there that can potentially translate into right, that stuff that we're aiming for reduction in crime, a good quality NHS and health system, good quality work, access to work and hopefully more than just work for people who are furthest from being able to access work at this point in time. They're all good things.
Speaker 2:The problem comes into how that actually translates into action and I suppose, from a social value and an impact measurement and management perspective, for that to be translated when we're actually doing things, that we need to move away from just planning some action and then counting whether the action's happened or even the output of the action Number of people that turned up at the activity, number of people that got into work, a bad thing, not wrong doesn't necessarily tell us if any change has happened for that group of people, and I think there seems to be more recognition of that that we have to move from impact management, project language, impact drivers into objectives of the impact outcomes, impact and value. I'd say for me that's the shift that needs to happen from a practice perspective for what's possible from this new procurement legislation to take effect. And it's a dangerous road to go down. Heidi, raising where to monetize or not to monetize peace.
Speaker 2:But, for whatever opinion on it.
Speaker 2:It has become such a prolific part of social value practice in relation to public sector procurement in the UK, particularly in England, and I would like for us to get to a point where, if we're going to value stuff in a monetized way, we start in relation to social value.
Speaker 2:We start valuing the bit that's telling us if any change has happened. So the outcomes value the outcomes, don't value the activity or the output because we've skipped a whole big bit. That's actually telling us that the core, the causality pathway we've done a thing and there's been some effect and we need to start valuing the change in in that, the thing that's happened, the change that's happened, not just say we've done, we've done this activity, we've got on this training course, we've done this activity, we've got on this training course, we've built this park Not a bad thing, not necessarily a bad thing, we've got days. But we need to shift that. Where we're seeing the monetisation part, what it's actually valuing, understanding it should be valuing the change, not just that the activities happened, and not thinking that means that represents social value. It's that pathway of change that should be representing creation or even destruction of social value, whether you monetize it or not yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:There's, I think, one of the issues around the contract management of your contract delivery and then it's done and dusted and there's no lasting social value and, reading through the procurement legislation things, I don't see that shift to okay. We want to leave some kind of legacy from the social value that we deliver through contracts and I think that for me, if I was a commissioner, I would be looking through that lens as opposed to is this going to deliver a nice little piece of social value for the length of this contract versus what will it sustain beyond the contract? Because that's the only way that we're really going to see that longer term change that we all desire in our communities really.
Speaker 2:I wonder with that as well, Heidi, I don't know what you think about this. Whilst the procurement piece is a really good lever, the way that I thought about it might be the thing that's driven an organisation to start thinking, oh gosh, we should be responding to this social value thing that's out there. But the bit where it starts to make sense and can become a and, not just the nudging you into change but change happening is where it becomes okay. What are we actually doing as an organisation? How are we impacting on people's lives and the environment and looking at it in a more holistic way, rather than just trying to respond to the things that are in a particular tender or in the form? You know, in this version, what we're talking about here the Procurement Act, particularly the NPPS, or the social value model, whatever set of things it is that gets defined, and that's where that can be really exciting.
Speaker 2:And it's a possibility, then, of responding to these from a position of strength, confidence, knowledge about what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2:It's a possibility, then, of responding to these from a position of strength, confidence, knowledge about what you're actually doing. But I suppose maybe that links back to the standards point that we were talking about before. The standards and the legislation is only as good as how it was developed at that particular point in time. And is it that difference between wanting to be socially and environmentally responsible, wanting to create a sustainable future rather than having to do it? So you'll just do what's necessary to meet the requirements of whatever the sort of standard is at that point in time. And those are those are. Those are two, two ends or two, two different attitudes towards these things. But even if it is well, we have to respond to this like actually coming at that from a position of what do we do as an organisation and using that to then respond to all these different requirements that might be coming through for different pieces of work or different audiences much more exciting prospect for an organization definitely.
Speaker 1:But last week I was talking an event and I my my take on social value is it should be part of your dna of an organization, and it's a journey where you're not going. If you think of social value just as a fixed destination, in that it's ticking the boxes for procurement, then your journey is like getting on the bus at one stop and getting off at the next stop, versus if you think about it from. How can we we've filter and embed that in everything, every action that we take as an organization or a business, so that it becomes a longer term journey, and it's it's in us, as opposed to it's an external thing. And I think that's that's the real hope that, although this might be that the trigger that gets people involved in social value, it actually then becomes something they're like. This makes sense.
Speaker 1:It would be good to do this because you know it's not just about the financial side, it is about the people, it is about the planet, and if we can do all of those and see where we might be making a decision in one of those three areas that's at the expense of another, versus where could we make a decision that complements and supports one of those other areas and I think that's the real goal, where you've got people that are, as you say, just doing the social value because it's there in the procurement, versus the people that recognize this bigger picture of what social value is about, people that recognise this bigger picture of what social value is about and there's only so much shouting you can do in that aspect of it, but it's still the utopian dream, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah maybe I'm not optimistic. I believe that people are in general, we're all just people and we're all just trying to live a reasonably good life and we all have connections with one another. We care about the people we care about. We want to do the job when we're in work. I know that there's caveats to that, which are really obvious, but I do think those are the sort of wild cards that the majority of us are trying to do as well as we can in the circumstances that that we're in, and I see social value or and impact management practice as a way of being able to more methodically understand that whole area relationships, impact on the environment, volunteering programs, supporting charitable causes, looking after each other at work, gaining new skills, looking after the nature, spending time with animals all these things that matter, um, and recognizing them in a more methodical way and planning for them a bit better. And I think we can all recognize those things. We're not all.
Speaker 2:Obviously, money is a big driver for some people, but even within, I used to work at london business school and there was all the sort of organizational behavior type stuff or how to influence people or what how do you become a good leader for a team and absolutely money was one of the motivators, but it's definitely the only one and it's completely superseded by other motivators within a team or organisation or industry or purpose-driven sector. Look at some of the big organisations like Unilever. They're massive, right, been around for, don't you see it? And their line isn't about we're a giant organization that's emerged with loads of brands around the world and has a huge financial bottom line and gives out loads of money to our shareholders. They talk about saving people's lives through some things like that, and it's. We're here to change people's lives and that speaks to people, right, because that's what we know matters to us. So why isn't that more integrated through our data management, our metrics of telling showing whether we're doing any good? I think we've got some cool stuff going on in this country, nation of nations. I look to Wales and Scotland. Really, they both have taken great world-leading steps towards being well-being economies. It's amazing to see. You can see those things drip, feeding through into how stuff is decided upon and what's prioritized within emotional context. I just think there's so much possibility in there for us to be able to move towards a more sustainable and equal society where we've all got a reasonably good standard of living and we've got more space and more recognition for all this stuff makes our lives good.
Speaker 2:I don't know what economist it was I don't have to remember his name another time but I remember this very prominent economist and he used to talk about the economy. It's like the economy should be about how we take care of one another, but the way that we understand it is primarily about maximization of money, gdp, profit, production. We can, we're allowed, we've made up these systems. Society's made up these systems. Society's made up these systems like we can remake them and direct them towards what we think this should be about. And if we're going to have economic systems leading what we do day to day, shouldn't it be about how we take care of one another and about the wales economy, the well-being of our future generations? That speaks to me certainly a lot more than economy or maximum GDP or maximum financial return to shareholders.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really valuable point. We made it up so we can make something else up. It's completely true. My, my final question, before I ask you to share your links to social media and different things, is just about measure up. What is measure up all about?
Speaker 2:yeah, great. Thank you, heidi. This is a passion project for sure, certainly for me and for the other partners. So before I joined Impact Reporting those within Impact Reporting, prd and State of Life they were trying to imagine it was a what if? What if we took a next step with social value measurement and valuation practice? What if we just put all of the measures and values out there? I'm sure people within the UK are in this space. They'll be aware that there is different valuation and measurement frameworks that are out there. There's been a version of this. That's a real shame, because there isn't one perfect way of measuring and valuing impact or individual impacts at this point in time. So we need to be more transparent and clear about the different practice that we're putting into place, the data and sources that we're using, the level of data that we're gathering, so the level of confidence we've got in our value estimates, and we need to be able to see all of that so that we can incrementally get better at understanding this and also improving the practice itself. So measure up is a response to this. Where are we now with valuation and measurement practice? What are some of the issues? Rather than us just recognizing the issues.
Speaker 2:What could we do to take a step forwards in addressing some of these? We've developed a set of socially and environmentally important in quotation marks, social and environmental activities and outcomes, done a load of background research into publicly available data sources, environmental activities and outcomes, done a load of background research into available publicly available data sources and published research and used those sources to be able to develop a reasonable proxy value for that particular thing. For example, a person being on an apprenticeship, somebody, somebody regularly volunteering, improvement or increased access to green space, environmental things, we reduction in weight, going to landfill that's the lots of these sorts of things. Some relationship or feeling type things as well. Reduction in loneliness, increased life satisfaction.
Speaker 2:We've then published these that said, what's the value? What type of value is it? Economic, well-being, fiscal, environmental values? Where's it come from? What do we even mean by this value? What's volunteering regularly? What counts as regularly? All of that sort of stuff. So that's all published.
Speaker 2:People can just take them and use them. We ask that if you do use it, it'd be nice if you just said where you got it from. Partly it's just a recognition of the source, but also from a transparency perspective, so people can look at. Where have you got this from and what are the sources that has been used. It's still a professional judgment that's gone into this base value that could be used. And then the other thing we've been working on with it is graded levels of measurement practice.
Speaker 2:Right, because it matters the data and research that's gone into the development of this proxy value and research that's gone into the development of this proxy value, this being on an apprenticeship, worth about this much to the person, to the company, to the economy, that sort of thing. It then matters what's the data that you're going to gather to be able to claim value. So we've we've defined these as bronze, silver gold got a gold plus. So bronze would be your basic. The person who did a thing times it by the proxy value. The silver level is supposed to be getting a bit more granular. So, rather than generic person using the apprenticeship option here, adult learning for work person goes on training course for work times it by the proxy value At the silver level.
Speaker 2:You might want to recognize that people might get different benefits out of this thing that they've done. They might also experience it differently because we're all different people, right? So somebody who's gotten into work, who would have gotten into work anyway and had loads of work-based access. Is that the same level of value as supporting somebody who wouldn't have gotten into work otherwise, really far from the workforce, long-term unemployed, homeless, disabled, all of these things that put barriers into accessing work or doing certain sorts of activities? So can we differentiate and we call that the silver level and then at the gold level, coming right back to the beginning when we were talking about the social value principles. So if we're claiming we've had some impact on someone's life and there's some value to that, at some point we should probably ask them if we have had some impact and if it was valuable to them. So we put that at gold level.
Speaker 2:If you're claiming this, could you do to ask the group of people directly? You've been volunteering regularly. What have you been volunteering regularly that impacted on your well-being in these sorts of ways? And then the way we've framed that is that for each particular value we have particular questions or data points that you could gather that relate back to the original source. It's not to say then that you should go out and just ask someone that question and then say goodbye. It's likely you'd want to do some more rounded stakeholder engagement and you'd gain more insight and value from that. But that's how the resource itself works. I'll say I know you've let me loose on measure up here, I just want to say two more things.
Speaker 2:One cool thing that we're working on at the moment is looking at if you're going to how would you decide to use any of these values. Right, because we shouldn't really start what's in the list and what's the biggest value, so we'll say we're doing that. It's like we should be looking at what's the need, what's going to be the most valuable things in our local area for our group of people. So we're starting to look at adding in local needs analysis resources that are specific to each individual value. So that sounds quite cool to me. I'm getting very excited about these different data sources that can help us to choose. Should we be doing an employment-related program? Should we be putting on a community cohesion program? Have people got access to green space? In this area, what sources of data would you look at to be able to understand what's going on before you decide to do that program? And then the other thing I'll say is that we're still developing the framework and the adoption of this framework, so we've got a whole list of new values that that we're working on and will be coming out, but we're doing this in a crowdsourcing kind of way, so if people have ideas of stuff they'd like to measure in value. Come and tell us, because we'd love to hear from you and love to collaborate to be able to develop this together and come and have a go.
Speaker 2:Part of the point of publishing this is to take the mystique away from this whole valuation thing. Where it's, we'll do it behind closed doors. The experts will do this over here. It's let's get your hands on it. Have a go. It's your value, it's not mine, it's not Measure Up's, it's not Expert at Number 10 over here, it's yours, it's your organisation. Let's just come and have a go. Use them, criticise them, break them, get a bit more understanding about what social values actually mean, what goes into them, the professional judgements, the assumptions that go into using these things and what they actually mean. So yeah, we've got this whole area around adoption and supporting people to use the framework too. So if you're interested in getting into just having a go, come and reach out to us and be excited about supporting people to do a bit more of this practice themselves you sound like you can talk about measure up for much, much longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just condescension enthusiasm there. Definitely so if people did want to find out more about measure up or impact reporting, do you want to just share where people can get in touch with you, please?
Speaker 2:yeah, sure. So both impact reporting and measure up have websites and linkedin profiles. So linkedin pages I think you've all done work for a company so you can connect us. We've got a newsletter that we try to get out monthly. We've got some. We've been trying to run webinars through MeasureUp, so we've had an introductory one about the framework. We've had one about stakeholder engagement, like how do you do that in relation to the framework, and then other examples of practice. We've got some ideas. We've been doing quite a bit of work around environmental valuation at the moment, so we're looking to do a webinar about that soon. You can connect with me. Please connect with me. I'm very happy to answer any questions. Other members of my team Neil Khalifa she's in charge of all of our PR and comes and marketing and so a great source of info to be connected. We're not on any of the other social media. Impact reporting has taken the decision to to remove ourselves from the metaverse.
Speaker 1:The challenging things that are going on in terms of quality.
Speaker 2:So we're on LinkedIn. That's the best place to be able to find us. And, yeah, do reach out and connect, and we're open for any questions people have got thank you so much, kathleen.
Speaker 1:It's been really lovely talking to you, as it always is, so thank you for your time today thank you so much, heidi.
Speaker 2:It's a great pleasure to talk to you always as well, so really appreciate being here with you thank you for joining us on this episode of the Make an Impact podcast.
Speaker 1:I hope you found today's conversation as inspiring and thought-provoking as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who want to create positive change. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and learn more about my work at makeanimpactciccouk. Until next time, let's keep making an impact in the world.