This is a 6 part blog series on strategising, planning, budgeting, and implementing social value. The aim is to present the key principles of efficient, meaningful and commercially viable social value delivery.
Budgeting and governance can be the most logistically challenging elements of social value but strategic planning and understanding the responsibility of different roles is the key to successful social value delivery.
Governance
Each department and hierarchical level of your organisation plays a part in social value. Communication and organisation between individuals and departments is crucial to creating actionable and impactful social value plans and for writing winning social value bids.
Board / C-Level Commitment
When the tender-related social value strategy and budget framework are in place, the board and company directors can focus on monitoring the impact and profitability of their contract work. It also helps set targets for future bids and allocation of resources. Too many companies do this in hindsight and can be surprised by the social value delivery requirements after a tender has been won. This creates additional costs and confusion in various departments as well as undelivered or delayed social value.
Social Value Management Level
From our knowledge, the greatest issue with governance is that bid-writing is too separated from those responsible for social value delivery. This leaves Bid writers alone in drafting up plans, usually at a very high level, as they have no authority for resource allocation or implementation. The key to winning bid-writing, actioning social value and reporting on impact, comes down to seamless communication and collaboration between the different actors involved. With a lack of communication, bid writers risk over-promising certain elements, or they may be unaware of existing social value activities with a proven impact which can be easily replicated. Centralising social value systems and databases for the entire team to access and use is essential. This also tackles the time strain when putting together a social value plan for a bid. To create something tangible and actionable, collaboration between departments and utilising technology is principal.
Engaging with all employees
If a company wishes to use their volunteering programme to meet the needs of a locally relevant tender, the causes and organisations that employees volunteer with should match the tender’s social value goals. This can sometimes conflict with the causes employees would otherwise choose to support. Communication and effective coordination of employees is important. Again, harnessing matchmaking technology to combine company social value goals with local volunteering is essential for these activities to be relevant and reportable for specific tenders. Reporting only on used hours is not enough as the ‘inputs’ are different to reaching social value outcomes.
Budgeting
Setting budgets for social value continues to be a big problem for many companies. We’ve found that only 30% monitor the amount spent on social value, and only 20% have a specific budget for social value per tender. In terms of commercial sustainability, social value budgets should be monitored the same way as sales and marketing budgets: cost lines being internal labour, systems and other purchase costs and external investments and contributions.
There are tax benefits to investing in social value and there are various principles you can follow to support health budgeting.
Corporate tax benefits on contributions
When planning and budgeting company contributions to charitable organisations, available Corporation Tax reliefs play a huge role in what the contributions cost to the company. Companies can claim tax relief by deducting the value of their donations from their total business profits before tax. The following donations are eligible: money, equipment or trading
