The Social Value Exchange

Barista: How do you take your coffee? Me: Very, very seriously. Come and get a free one from us at the National Social Value Conference in Westminster. #socialvalue #socialvaluematters #socialimpact

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The name Peabody is synonymous with the idea of social housing because it is one of the oldest, and largest, housing associations in the UK. It was founded in 1862 by the American banker and philanthropist George Peabody. The first Peabody dwellings were in Spitalfields, on the edge of the City and not too far from where Match My Project is based, in Hackney Wick. In fact, our offices are part of the RIBA award winning Peabody development on #FishIsland (we're about halfway down the vertical of the C, top left). Peabody is continuing its long history of working with communities to tackle social and economic inequality through its new partnership with Match My Project, we can announce today. Thanks to Corin Menuge (he/him), Andrea Purslow and Christofi Christou for their help behind the scenes. We can start doing the interesting stuff now! We’re all looking forward to working with you and the rest of your team. And we're excited to start engaging Peabody’s community and business partners. Match My Project will help them collaborate at scale to get even more Social Value and impact delivered for Peabody residents. #socialvalue #community #impact #delivery  

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Fantastic Match My Project launch event this afternoon with A2Dominion Group. Thank you to Dele Ryder and team, not just for today but for getting us all to the start line. Thanks to my team - Susanna S. and Zahra Shah 💪 It’s always great when we bring one of the big housing associations on board. It’s no different with A2Dominion Group. Because 38,000 homes means a lot of people we can reach. And a lot of great projects that can be delivered. We're not delivering these projects: A2D's suppliers and community partners are. A2D, like the other The G15 housing associations, has a lot of spending power in its supply chain. That spending power can be used to incentivise A2Dominion suppliers to maximise their Social Value for the benefit of A2Dominion residents. It was great to see some of you on the call. Finally and most importantly, thanks to all the community organisations that shared their time with us today. As I said when we wrapped up, it's easy for me and my team to obsess about how we can make our tools easier to use. We're all about building community capacity. We're also all about building simple, elegant product. We have a long way to go, on both counts. Sometimes we need soft eyes, just like Bunk said. To look around. To zoom out. Today's session let us do that. And, speaking for myself, it is always a genuine tonic to hear from community organisations what they are doing in their communities and why it is important. Please follow A2Dominion Group's progress on Match My Project. Please get in touch with me or any of the team if you want to know more. #impact #delivery #community #socialvalue

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Awesome to see the Match My Project team now working with Thirteen Group up in the North East - we're all looking forward to delivering Social Value and impact with new local community partners and businesses. Please get in touch! https://lnkd.in/e6E9JgB5 #socialvalue #community #impact

The most enjoyable football match I've been to, we lost. 2011. Old Trafford. 2-0. We were schooled. But we chanted in the away end for the entire match. It was so much fun. We missed out last night at the iNetwork awards... no chanting this time. But again, a huge amount of fun. We were up for the Connected Commissioning and Procurement Award. Match My Project lost out to the GM One Network project, a collaboration between Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Transport for Greater Manchester, Bury Council, Rochdale Borough Council and Stockport Council. Congratulations, great project, very well earned. Adrian Davies was kind enough to let us bask in his glow! Well done Adrian and team. But we all had such a good time with everyone at iNetwork and, in particular, Caroline Woolley and Laura Mercer. Win, lose or draw, it was great to spend time with customers and get to know them properly over one or two glasses of wine. And great to see some of the really innovative work going on up North! #innovation #localgov #impact #happyfriday #coyg

It's hard to know exactly where to start. A Social Value measurement tool has declared that by next year it will have created £100bn in Social Value. That's roughly 3% of UK GDP. Enough to pay down the current UK budget deficit. If you told our communities that £100bn had been invested in them, or was coming their way, they would not have a Scooby Doo what you were talking about. When the gap between rhetoric and reality grows too big, credibility is lost. I'm not talking about the measurement tool. I'm talking about Social Value. Social Value provides us - all the people that work in this space - with an opportunity to strengthen our local communities. We need to. You don't have to be a geo-political strategist to understand we live in precarious times. I think a lot of political leaders see it all as a high stakes poker game. But we are the chips. Our votes are the chips. If we can start to build up our communities again, 𝘄𝗲 take back control. Otherwise, anger and resentment will continue to grow. What does this have to do with £100bn of Social Value? It's about taking the work seriously. Not ourselves, but what we do. No one in our communities would take that £100bn seriously. And they are the ones whose opinions matter. The post by my colleague Laura Miller below? That's Social Value that's real. We can touch it. We know where we stand. Time for everyone doing Social Value to get real. #socialvalue #communities  #credibilitygap #procurement #impact #localgov