Glossary

Activities are defined as how we use the inputs to achieve the outcomes.

Additionality is the extent to which something happens as a result of an intervention that would not have occurred without that intervention.

Attribution is how much of the actual outcome was caused by us and not by other factors.

Blended value includes all values an organisation creates, and takes the view that value is generated from the combination and interaction between the components part of economic, social and environmental activities/performance. (Emerson 2003).

Cost benefit analysis is where the expected costs and benefits of an intervention are estimated and the trade-off between costs and benefits is considered. Social CBA requires all impacts – social, economic, environmental, financial etc. – to be assessed relative to continuing with what would have taken place in the absence of intervention, referred to in the Green Book as Business As Usual.

Cost effectiveness analysis compares the costs of alternative ways of producing the same or similar outputs.

I have chosen the definition given by WRAP: A circular economy is an alternative to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.

The inclusion of community/social benefits in procurement contracts.

Defined in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 as a contractual requirement, community benefits relate to training, recruitment and the availability of sub-contracting opportunities.

Corporate social responsibility includes things like business ethics, sustainability and corporate citizenship; organisations that attempt to maximise environmental and social value by their activities. It is sometimes criticised for being a cynical attempt by business to promote a positive brand/image by doing very little.

A cost-benefit analysis compares the monetary values of costs and benefits to establish what the net cost or benefit of an intervention might be. To support this, an increasing stock of unit cost data is emerging.

The Treasury Green Book explains how to conduct a social cost-benefit analysis as a way to appraise a project and includes some information on estimating costs/benefits that do not have a market value.

Deadweight is a measure of the amount of outcome that would have happened even if the activity had not taken place. It is calculated as a percentage.

Discounting is used to compare costs and benefits occurring over different periods of time – it converts costs and benefits into present values. It is based on the concept of time preference: that generally people prefer to receive goods and services now rather than later. If Projects A and B have identical costs and benefits but Project A delivers benefits a year earlier, time preference means Project A is valued more highly. (The Green Book)

Displacement is an assessment of how much of the outcome displaced other outcomes.

In future years, the amount of outcome is likely to be less or, if the same, will be more likely to be influenced by other factors, so attribution to your organisation is lower. Drop-off is used to account for this and is only calculated for outcomes that last more than one year.

Econometrics are metrics linked to traditional economic measures, for example, financial, GDP etc.

Environmental, social and corporate governance is to do with measuring the sustainability and ethics of an investment using these three categories to determine if the investment is a responsible one. (See SRI)

The Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust. Their website says ‘HACT is a solutions agency committed to promoting ideas and innovation across the housing sector.’ I have no idea what this means in practice but they have developed the social value calculator for the industry.

Horizontal enforcement of policies occurs when a given policy or group of policies are enforced through horizontally integrated governance processes.(Halloran 2017) For the purposes of social value, this applies to the 2014 procurement directives, the Social Value Act 2012 and the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014.

However, there is a wide range of government policies which could fall into this category, for example, the Equality Act 2010.

An impact value statement is a report declaring the social impact of your social value activities.

Inputs are all the resources used/needed to accomplish social impact or social value. Social impact and social value are often used interchangeably, but a distinction should be drawn because when evaluating the impact, assumptions are made as to the value at a societal level. Some would argue this is merely semantics, but it is an important distinction, especially considering the subjective nature of social value generally. At the time of writing there is still no commonly agreed definition of social value.

Created in 2002 by the New Economic Forum, LM3 maps a business’s source of income and how this is spent and then re-spent in the local economy to generate benefits.

Optimism bias is the proven tendency for appraisers to be too optimistic about key project parameters, including capital costs, operating costs, project duration and benefits delivery. (The Green Book)

Outcomes are less tangible (and so harder to quantify) than outputs, for example, increasing confidence, increasing employability or reducing reliance on X.

Usually the benefits or changes for the intended stakeholder group, outputs are often stated as numbers: for example, the number of jobs created or the number of users of a service.

The Act imposes duties for Scottish public bodies, including sustainability requirements and a lower regulated threshold of £50,000.

The public sector is made up of organisations funded by the population and owned by the government delivering free or subsidised services to the population of the country.

Organisations that have left the public sector but continue delivering public services and have a significant degree of employee ownership, influence or control are known as public service mutual. (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Office for Civil Society, July 2019)

A QALY is a measure of the state of health of a person or group in which the benefits, in terms of length of life, are adjusted to reflect the quality of life. One QALY is equal to 1 year of life in perfect health.

QALYs are calculated by estimating the years of life remaining for a patient following a particular treatment or intervention and weighting each year with a quality-of-life score (on a 0 to 1 scale). It is often measured in terms of the person’s ability to carry out the activities of daily life, with freedom from pain and mental disturbance. (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.)

The financial values assigned to social value outcomes.

The Selwood Housing Group included the Silva Social Enterprise (it is now dissolved), which aimed to support the development of enterprises that could reinvest funds in their communities. The Silva Social Enterprise Clause emphasised the importance of social value and enabled contractors to increase their score by including components that contributed towards community benefit.

A social clause is a legal requirement within a procurement contract which stipulates that the contract must provide added social value. (Halloran 2017)

SEUK is a large network of social enterprises in the UK. SEUK’s vision is of a more equal society believing that social enterprise offers the best chance of creating a fairer world and protecting the planet.

A social entrepreneur runs a business for the greater good and to solve social problems rather than for personal profit.

Social impact analysis is any method of attempting to assess/quantify/report social impact.

Generally, social justice is to do with equality, freedom, reducing poverty and the common good.

Social responsibility is the responsibility of organisations for their impact on society and the environment, as evidenced through transparent and ethical behaviour that:

• Contributes to sustainable development, including the health and welfare of society
• Takes into account the expectations of stakeholders
• Is in compliance with applicable law and consistent with international norms of behaviour
• Is integrated throughout the organisation and practised in all its relationships

Extracted from ISO 26000:2010

In government appraisal, costs and benefits are discounted using the social time preference rate of 3.5%.

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a commissioning tool that can enable organisations to deliver outcomes contracts and make funding for services conditional on achieving results. Social Investors pay for the project at the start, and then receive payments based on the results achieved by the project. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/social-impact-bonds

The National Social Value Task Force was founded in February 2016 in order to establish a good practice framework for the integration of the Public Services (Social Value Act) 2012 (‘Act’) into our public sector and business.

Also described as green investing, sustainable investing, ethical investment. These are investments in organisations, projects or initiatives that are considered to be socially responsible due to the nature of the activities, products or services the organisation undertakes.

The value of a SLY is derived from the social value of a small change in the probability (the risk) of losing or gaining a year of life expectancy.

The UN defines sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

Targeted recruitment and training is a type of social clause whereby the buyer specifies the types/categories from which employees are drawn, for example, the long term unemployed or NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training).

The aim of the National TOMs Framework is to provide a minimum reporting standard for measuring social value and is designed around five key issues, 18 outcomes and 35 measures.

The ‘triple bottom line’ is used as a framework for simultaneously measuring and reporting organisational performance against economic, social and environmental parameters (profit, people and planet).

In economics, utility refers to the usefulness or enjoyment a consumer can get from a service or good. This is an over-simplification and its usage and application vary significantly depending on the context.

Value of a prevented fatality measures the social value of changes in risk to life. It is used to value small changes in fatality risks, where levels of human safety vary between options. This is not the value of a life: it is the value of a small change in the risk or probability of losing a statistical life. Not to value this in appraisal would effectively value human safety at zero. (The Green Book, pg. 51)

Social enterprises make a profit but reinvest or donate profits to target social problems. Community enterprises are community owned, led and controlled and use their profits to tackle environmental and social problems in their area so yes, they are social enterprises too.

The widely accepted definition of a social enterprise is:

“businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximize profit for shareholders and owners”

Welfare economics attempts to evaluate economic policies with regard to the effect on the welfare/wellbeing of the community. (The Encyclopaedia Britannica)

There are now a wide variety of wellbeing tools around, but all share the same common aim – to assess an individual’s wellbeing. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) is one such tool but there are many more in use, some complex and others less so.

Wellbeing valuations measure the success of a social value intervention or initiative by how much it increases the self-reported wellbeing of the target group, and then transposes this into a financial value.