Beyond outputs demonstrating genuine impact

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Beyond outputs - demonstrating genuine impact

• Heidi Harris

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About the trainer

• Volunteer with Bloomsbury Cyber Junction (BCJ)
  bid writing and finances
• Joint owner of CIC specialising in providing
  accountancy support to charities, voluntary
  community groups, and social enterprises
• Chartered Accountant
• Over 10 years experience of working in the
  voluntary and community sector

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Session Overview

• Background to BCJ
• What makes BCJ successful
• Issues affecting BCJs success
• Evaluation and impact reporting
• Overview of Social Accounting (SAN)

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Background to BCJ

• BCJ established August 2000 (registered charity)
• To provide IT activities for young people
• Resolving a local issue
• In Nechells ward, Birmingham an area that had
  seen millions of regeneration
• Residents tired of projects and considered hard
  to reach

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Background to BCJ

• How would you involve hard to reach groups in a
  new project?

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Background to BCJ

• One person acting as a community leader
• Pushing for change
• Gaining trust of other residents door
  knocking/on the street
• Not being put off by negative comments of
  statutory bodies
• This was crucial for BCJs initial success
• Community engagement just happens every day now!

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Background to BCJ

• 2002 started working with adults
• Employed first 3 staff
• Developed 3 areas of activities
• 2006 second premises, plus outreach at various
  locations
• Grown from income of 1,500 to nearly 200,000
• Problems with gaining funding

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Why BCJ is successful

• Run by local residents
• Strong community involvement
• All staff professionally qualified
• Committed volunteers
• Quality and appropriate procedures

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Why BCJ continues to be successful

• Engagement
• Responsive to changing needs
• Awards from RegenWM and Enterprising
• Communities
• Partnership working
• Outreach
• New projects/income generation activities
• Core values listen to everyone

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Core values

• Our services are accessible to all
• Trust and honesty are used to build positive
  relationships
• Our services are delivered professionally and to
  a high quality
• We provide a supportive environment and value
  each individual (you never know who that person
  is the secret millionaire?)
• We work together in a team to achieve more
• Do you have a set of core values that underpin
  how you work?
• Should be reflected in everything your
  organisation does

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Partnership working

• The good, the bad and the ugly
• Bournville Village Trust
• Employment Preparation Team
• Community Facilitators Project
• Realise Project cluster
• BEST network
• City Spirit Project
• Consortia bids
• What are the key issues with partnerships?

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Evaluation of BCJ

• BCJ evaluates every project
• Gains feedback continually
• Matrix assessment needed to obtain more formal
  feedback
• Realise project Social accounting cluster
• ESF projects required lots of beneficiary
  information and paperwork
• Recognised change from outputs to outcomes, and
  developed systems

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Beyond outputs

• Inputs

Activities
Outputs
Outcomes
Impacts
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Social Accounting

• Opportunity to undertake social accounting as
  part of Realise
• Worked in a cluster with other organisations
• Training and support from SAN
• Everyone committed to the process
• Decided to review our IT training activities only

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What is social accounting?

• Social Accounting (and SROI) are tools for
• Measuring social, environmental and economic
  impacts
• Reporting on performance
• Planning and improving how you work
• Not just for measuring impact but a whole process
  and way of developing your organisation

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Outcomes to Impacts

• Impact measurement is not a quick fix
• Requires an investment of time
• Requires a commitment to changing how a whole
  organisation thinks and works
• A development tool not just a one off exercise

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Getting Ready

• Clarity regarding
• Mission (vision/purpose for existing) not about
  education but equality and inclusiveness
• BCJ first port of call for any resident issues
• BUT
• We are clear about what we do and when we need to
  refer elsewhere
• Values (principles that underpin how BCJ
  operates)
• Objectives and activities (What BCJ wants to
  achieve and the work it does to achieve this)
• Stakeholders (individuals/organisation that BCJ
  affect or who can affect BCJ)

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Next steps

• Gathered information
• Consulted key stakeholders (management committee,
  volunteers, staff, partner organisations, funders
  and beneficiaries)
• Used Annual Award ceremony to undertake
  questionnaires
• Used existing sources of information feedback
  forms, evaluation forms, follow up forms to
  identify what had happened to each beneficiary
• Case studies
• Base line information from registration forms

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Economic impact

• Most organisations find it easy to report on
  social impacts
• Economic and environmental impact information
  usually much harder
• Social accounting sees SROI as one way of
  measuring economic impact
• As an accountant the numbers interested me
• Decided to do SROI for BCJ as part of our Social
  Accounts
• Translates impacts in to a financial measure

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Social Return on Investment

• Proven economic impact to be 3.92m,
• which is over 20 times the income received in
  2007. This was achieved by
• Supporting 42 local residents to gain employment
• Improving 228 local residents soft skills
• Increasing 134 local residents qualification
  levels
• Supporting 13 young people to return to education
  or training
• Using volunteers and employing local people

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Social Return on Investment

• Found out how many beneficiaries had gone
  in to employment and the type of employment 42
  ranging from taxi drivers to administrators
• Calculated average wages for each job
• Worked out how benefit entitlement would change
  (no longer receive JSA but receive WTC instead)
• Worked out how much tax and NIC would be paid

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Social Return on Investment

• Calculate benefit for each impact
• Adjusted for deadweight, drop off and attribution
  (40 reduction)
• Adjusted for inflation and project benefits that
  will accrue over a number of years (ie once
  gained employment we expect that person to stay
  in employment for 5 years)
• Calculated SROI (net benefit/net investment)
• Did this for each area of economic impact
  (volunteers, NEET, earnings potential
  (qualifications) and soft skills)

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Proving and Improving

• Social Accounting Report
• Case studies individual impact reports
• In 2008 used same principles to demonstrate
  impact
• Predictive impact and SROI for applications

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Contact Details

• Heidi Harris
• heidi_at_harrisaccountancy.co.uk
• 07530 428738 or 0121 240 8974

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Social accounting overview

• Social Audit Network