SOCIAL STRATEGY
The POD play bus has helped improve the lives of families in 70 communities in North Kesteven, East Midlands
“SOON AFTER THE SROI STUDY WAS PUBLISHED, WE APPLIED TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND GAINED AN EXTRA £600,000 IN FUNDING FOR NEW PROJECTS”
Edinburgh Leisure’s activities totalled £25.5m, while individual projects were also measured. For example, the Healthy Active Minds programme for adults with mild to moderate depression was found to deliver benefits worth over £2m a year.
Clearer direction Edinburgh Leisure’s chief executive John Comiskey says the catalyst for the report came from “a bit of soul- searching from within the organisation” in the face of ever-biting funding cuts.
“We needed to be clearer about what we were doing and how we measured the difference we made in terms of getting more people more active,” he adds. The study – which took around 10
months to complete – focused on seven key business areas that could be easily measured, such as its facilities’ sports pitch use, adult swimming programmes and youth projects. The completed findings represented an in-depth look at around 65 per cent of the trust’s business. Comiskey says the impact of the
report has been manifold. Not only did it give Edinburgh Leisure clarity as an organisation, enabling it to identify and prioritise its efforts and resources, but it also helped motivate staff who could clearly see the results of their hard work. Perhaps above all, it strengthened the trust’s business case for further funding in the eyes of the city council. Comiskey explains: “It really made us think in a different way. Soon after
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the study was published, we applied to Edinburgh City Council and gained £600,000 in additional funding for new projects. It gave us a strong selling point at a time when it was getting harder than ever to justify spending.” The study has also helped Edinburgh
Leisure focus attention on social inclusion projects: while projects in areas of deprivation often require a different and more costly delivery, and perhaps reach a limited number of people, they deliver a much higher SROI score when compared to a regular programme, according to Comiskey.
Impacts and outcomes Edinburgh Leisure and NLL are still very much in a minority of leisure organisations that have calculated SROI data in this way. Both studies were very wide ranging, involving a lengthy process using consultants, and therefore represented a significant financial investment (although given the results they achieved, both organisations would no doubt argue that the payback was far greater than the expenditure). So what about those who don’t have
the budget to invest in an official report – can any sport and leisure operator start measuring SROI on their own, even if only on a small scale? According to Brian Woodcock, senior associate consultant at leading sports and leisure consultancy Continuum, the answer is yes. Woodcock, who is also a member of the SROI Network, says he has seen
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an upturn in interest in SROI, although most leisure organisations are still at the
“conversation stage” for now. “We help local authorities and leisure
organisations plan more robustly to measure outcomes and impacts, and we’ve done a lot of workshops on the topic. SROI is just one of the methodologies, although it can be one of the simplest for organisations to employ themselves,” he says. According to Woodcock, SROI has
been developed and refined to permit a greater understanding of the social benefit and social value generated by everyday projects. For that reason, it doesn’t come with the complicated research protocols that other methods do – methods that are therefore costlier, longer-term or needing to be delivered by the obligatory consultant team. SROI studies can be evaluative,
analysing outcomes that have already happened, or they can be predictive, estimating the social value if outcome targets are met. Woodcock says:
“There’s no official benchmark, but generally an SROI ratio of 1:3 and above is considered very good. So if you apply the methodology for a forecast study and the results come back as 1:1, you would probably want to reconsider putting your plan into action. “The common denominator for
comparison is always currency: if you spend £1, what do you get in return? It’s about comparing value in a consistent way – not necessarily putting a value
May 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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