Case Study
Building a Social Accounting Framework and developing SWY's first Social Impact Report.
Starts With You are a Bolton-based social business delivering a wide range of services including employment support, cleaning, and environmental services.
As a social enterprise, SWY already have a strong foundation of social values underpinning their business structure and activities.
Discovering the Value
In discussions with key members of the SWY team, we explored the mian areas where the business makes a difference to the lives of their stakeholders and how this aligned to their already identified vision, mission and values We mapped out anticipated outputs, outcomes and impact based around on four key organisational objectives.
We conducted a thorough stakeholder analysis – SWY work with a wide and varied client base, and their work affects lots of different people, so we wanted to make sure that everyone involved was being considered. We also considered SWY’s internal processes and practices, looking at things like local economic impact, governance structure and human resource practices.
Measuring the Value
The next stage was to create a Social Accounting framework, allowing SWY to measure and report on their social, environmental and economic performance as part of their ongoing business planning cycle. This involved developing a set of indicators – things that were happening in SWY’s work that could be easily measured, and give the clearest picture of the social value generated. We worked with SWY to build on the data collection methods already in place and identified how we could gather additional qualitative and qualitative data to evidence their impact.
I worked with SWY to produce a full set of social accounts, which collated all the available data we had to evidence social, economic and environmental impact. As this was just the beginning of SWYs journey we learnt a lot together, identifying areas where stakeholder engagement and data collection could be strengthened in the future.
Karen has supported SWY to develop our Social Impact / Accounting framework, so that we are able to both understand and evidence our impact. She took time to get to know and understand our business and to upskill and inform the team along the way, adding value to her work at every stage. As well as a framework for capturing, measuring and reporting our impact she left us with a more engaged team with better understanding of the importance and value of our Social Impact processes. Karen is professional, knowledgeable and patient but above all builds genuine understanding and authentic relationships to inform her work and add value.
Hayley Hulme, Starts With You
Celebrating the Value
Based on the social accounts, SWY produced a Social Value Report, celebrating their first two years of trading, telling the success story of their organisation through the words and lives of the people they’d supported. This included the hundreds of people now back in work, the elderly people who felt more connected and confident and the staff team who felt more secure and valued in their mission to lift their own communities.
We shared the report far and wide, to raise awareness of SWY’s fantastic work – on their website, on social media, blogs, and the local press.
Maximising the Value
Looking to the future, what more could SWY do to fulfil their mission to deliver excellent, ethical and reliable services? We delivered a series of recommendations to inspire the organisation to go further, working towards maximum social impact for beneficiaries without sacrificing their commercial viability.
Turn it up!
Starts With You are one of the leading lights of the Bolton social enterprise community, and helping them discover and celebrate their achievements was hugely rewarding.
