Charity Insights

I finally bid farewell to the team at the Big Issue Foundation a few weeks back, since which time I’ve been tinkering away at my final report. I’d wanted to get all my ideas nailed down before blogging my final post, hence why this one is coming a little late.

I had originally set out to calculate The Big Issue Foundation’s social return on investment, as explained briefly in my previous post. I started at TBIF with practically a layperson’s knowledge of their operations, being little more than an admirer of the magazine and its ethos. But over the course of the five or so weeks I spent working there, my understanding of how it functions and where it creates its social value developed greatly. So too did my understanding of the methods used to account for that value, but the two did not grow to match one another. The more I learnt of the Big Issue Foundation and its impact and the more I learnt of the methods used to translate this impact into financial terms, the more I found that these methods were woefully inadequate in capturing where, in my eyes, the true value lie.

How do you put a value on being there for somebody when their family and friends have left them for dead?  How you do put a value on the patience and perseverance of the outreach team workers who, despite having to deal with abuse and relapse, never surrender in their bid to help vendors get their lives back on track? How do you put a value having someone to go with you to the dentist, for treatment that you badly need but haven’t sought out purely because you were scared to go? How do you put a value on being able to go out and do your job, feeling like you’re on top of your game, having had a free haircut and a shave? How do you put a value on rebuilding someone’s belief in society and in others, after they had felt so excluded and alone?

For me, the real value in TBIF’s work lay in ensuring those in crisis have that key human support they need at a time when they need it the most. For many of us, this support is so abundant that the thought of a world without it is practically unimaginable. It’s these interactions and these outcomes which, whilst they may not save the government a great deal of money, will bring more joy and happiness to these unstable individuals than I dare say any amount of money could bring to many of the rest of us.

Social return on investment evaluations serve a purpose and given the growth in social investment that purpose is growing in relevancy. But any evaluation fails to account for these benefits to the individual, which to somebody trying to get across the value of TBIF’s work such as myself seems at best flawed, at worst criminal. I’m not alone in this view: there is probably as much literature available that is critiques SROI approaches (or similar cost-benefit analyses) as offers guidance and I wonder if there will ever be suitable solution for the intractable problem of expressing the true value of different charities by means of a universal language. GiveWell, who rank charities based on lives saved per dollar spent, probably have the purest form of ranking but the fact that their system discriminates against the wealth of human needs is backed up by the fact that they recommend only three charities (across the globe) for sponsorship.

Now, having done my research, TBIF can say that given £1 today, they can create £1.45 of social change within twelve months, which makes for a useful tool in fundraising (although, to my knowledge, there is little scope for them to seek funding via SIBs in the near future).

At the time of writing the last post, I had SROI stars in my eyes but now I’m unsure if their adoption long term will prove healthy. For some, the access to funding will provide a stepping-stone to greater things, but is a charity sector driven by results, blurring the line between intended beneficiaries and data points, a step for the better?

I started out asking if you could express social change in financial terms and, if so, how well.  Now I find myself wondering if you should. In any case, my faith in human charity remains undiminished, moreover strengthened by what I’ve seen from my time at TBIF. Come what may, it’s reassuring to know that there will still be organisations like TBIF constantly pushing themselves to tackle social exclusion.

I had a whale of a time working at TBIF and I only hope that my contribution will prove useful. I’ve got to say a big thank you to Silja and Richard and to the rest of the team, Moira, Alan, Carolina, Stephen, Emma, Kathryn and Anna, who all made my short stay so enjoyable and who were so generous with their time. I’ve come out having seen a whole different side of the world – a far cry from what life on campus can lull you into thinking the real world is like – and that I wouldn’t have ordinarily seen were it not for Charity Insights.

It’s only been two weeks but I’m missing the place already!

 

Read Getting to the Heart of TBIF’s Social Value in full

Long may the weather continue!

Week four is well underway here at the Big Issue Foundation and the project is coming along. I wish I’d written a little more sooner, it’s evolved a great deal since I first arrived and I don’t quite where to begin. I’ve still got a few more weeks before I need to log out for the final time, so I’ll start from the top, lay out the basics, and (hopefully) catch up before the end.

Speaking broadly, the nature of the third sector is changing.

Charities are becoming more businesslike. They are learning the lessons of the private sector and applying to their own to cut costs and grow impacts. The rise of the terms ‘social enterprise’ and ‘third sector’ seems symptomatic of the change; charities are getting more serious. Uniquely they are looking to marry the cold calculation of business with the warm, fuzzy outcomes of charity, with a view, you could say, to making them warmer and fuzzier.

The change is already underway, with the charities at the top taking the lead. The press worked themselves into a lather last month over the fact that many charity bosses earned salaries upwards of £100,000 a year. But many of these charities have turnovers that run into the hundreds of millions of pounds, dwarfing the pay cheques of their management team and making them equivalent in size to a FTSE 250 company. When dealing with such significant responsibilities, having someone with the requisite skills is key. Working in the third sector is rapidly becoming a career in and of itself, and not just as a way for executive retirees to keep themselves busy altruistically.

Philanthropy too is changing. The rise of corporate social responsibility has meant giving back is not just a free gift from corporations to charities but now is an integral part of any modern business’ identity. It defines how the company is viewed from outside and, perhaps more importantly, how employees view themselves and what they do. Equally, by and large, philanthropy is no longer about the super-wealthy throwing cash at a pet cause. Donors are now investors and they want to see bang for their buck.

Most significantly, governments now see that many of the goals they set out to achieve through policy – in healthcare, crime, education, whatever it might be – lie very closely to the work undertaken by charities. If a social enterprise works with teens to help them keep on track in school, go on to university and become happy adults, there’s a knock on benefit to society. Potentially, it could lead to reduced crime, better health, improved economic output – all goals that the State sets out to improve via policy.

But what if you could transform this social benefit to fuel its creation in future? To incentivise (for want of a better word) future, better, more efficient projects, just as financial incentive drives business?

It’s this idea that has lead to the social impact bond, or SIB. A SIB is a way for social enterprises to fuel their growth, for social investors to put their money to good use and for governments to reward actions (preventive interventions) that ultimate save them money down the line. The investor puts up the funding, the social project receives the funding it needs and the government rewards the investor, analogously to interest, based on the outcomes that the project brings about. No social change, no payout; big social change, big payout. But how do you measure this social change? How much money will it have save in the long-term?  How can you put a monetary value on an intangible outcome?

This is where social return on investment (SROI) comes into play. Given the increased need for a consistent and shared language around accounting for social value, the principles of social return on investment were developed. By its very nature, translating social impact into pounds and pence is very difficult, but SROI offers a methodology for arriving at a balanced, best estimation. Once undertaken, a SROI study can be used in a variety of ways, from making a more compelling case when fundraising to evaluating the efficiencies of the work undertaken by an organisation.

Originally, I was tasked with attempting a SROI study for the Big Issue Foundation. And technically that’s what it still is. But having immersed myself into the organisation, it’s got a bit more complex than that.

But that can wait until another post, as there’s tanning that needs to be done.

Charities may be getting more serious but they’re not too serious (yet).

Read Greetings from sun-kissed Vauxhall! in full

It’s been just over a week since I started here at the Big Issue Foundation and already I’m starting to feel at home! I couldn’t have hoped for a more welcoming atmosphere that stands in stark (and pleasantly surprising) contrast to some of the places I’ve interned before.

And what an eventful week it’s been! I’ve met with people from across the organisation, in distribution, fundraising and Big Issue Invest. To a man, everyone has been lovely.

But one in particular sticks in the mind. On my second day here, I was introduced to a former vendor now working as a cycle courier, an exuberant character called Dean. Dean had this energetic charm and we had a chat while Moira, one of the foundation’s full time fundraisers, helped him paying for his application for the Big Issue’s London to Paris cycle ride. (A good eleven months in advance, no less.)

That afternoon, I made my way across the river towards college – a benefit of working part-time – as I needed to sort out some paperwork for my accommodation next year. Sitting on the bus, I’m scrolling through Twitter and see my feed abuzz with the coverage of Ed Milliband getting egged whilst on a meet-and-greet walkabout. Stuttering as it is on my feeble 3G, I check out the video of the moment itself on my phone. But then, as the film crews pan across the perpetrator and back to a egg-splattered victim – ‘that’s weird. That looks a bizarrely like Dean.’ I think nothing of it, as the 3G gives us the ghost.

The downside of part-time is missing the moment the bad news breaks in the office. For, lo, it was Dean and the fundraising team now had a job on their hands to monitor and handle any media repercussions that might head the Big Issue’s way. The next morning of a brilliant window into the sometimes prickly practicalities of running a nationally recognised charity.

My excitement aside, it’s a real shame for Dean. A tireless supporter of the Big Issue, they’ll now need to be cautious over his involvement with them – any political leaning, or association with a political leaning, would go against the charity’s nonpartisan ethos. Hopefully his moment of immaturity and foolishness won’t cost Dean any more than that.

At the business end of affairs, the project is gaining pace. Having been tasked to embark of a study to evaluate the charity’s social impact in financial terms, I’m slowly getting to grips with the available data and the recommended accounting methodologies. I’ll go into more depth in a later post, provided this week remains uneventful! This Thursday I’m taking to the streets to help out with a Freshfields CSR event they run for their new graduate inductees. They’re partnered up with a vendor and sent out on to the streets to sell. I reliably told that usually the grads are on their best behaviour, not least as most of them think they’re being judged! I fear my inner sadist might be the better of me. Why not make them sweat a little now, when tomorrow they’ll be the ones charging me an arm and a leg by the hour?

It’s not very charitable I know, but hey, you only intern at the Big Issue once….

(And, my apologies for the egg pun. These posts sadly don’t write themselves.)

Read An eventful eggs-perience… in full

I’m currently sitting in a café in Vauxhall, counting down the minutes until I start my placement at the Big Issue Foundation. The pre-first day nerves setting my mind to run wild, publishing my first post to the blog seemed like a welcome distraction…

 

I imagine most of you will recognize the Big Issue. Having thousands of vendors on streets across the UK each week have turned it into one of the country’s most trusted and recognizable social enterprise brands. What you might not know is that it’s actually split into three arms: the magazine, the foundation and the social investment vehicle. The magazine is the publication itself, the foundation is a charitable organization that actively works with vendors to help them achieve their personal goals and the investment vehicle, known as Big Issue Invest, seeks to support burgeoning social enterprise.

 

Arguably motivated by the Big Issue’s work, I’d always had a desire to help the homeless and vulnerably housed. No one living on the streets intended to find themselves there and, with only a few rolls of misfortune’s dice, any one of us could find ourselves in a similar situation.

 

When I heard about the Charity Insights programme, it struck me as a great opportunity to get actively involved in work with the homeless. Having done a little research, I made contact with a few relevant charities, and the Big Issue gave me the most positive response. Having looked over my CV and cover letter, they felt they had a suitably project for me, looking into the Social Return on Investment (SROI) of the Foundation’s activities. I’ll go into more detail in a future blog post, not least as I need to find out more about it for myself!

 

The clocks ticks ever closer to 10:30 and it’s nearly time for me to dive in. Here’s to hoping that all goes well and that by the time the next post comes around, I can fill you all in on the Big Issue’s SROI!

 

 

Read Clock ticking ever closer… in full