Social value is famously difficult to measure. It’s complex, variable and highly subjective. We can measure it in simple terms and risk missing important detail. Or we can measure as much as possible, and end up with data too complicated to be of any practical use.
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The frustrating thing for practitioners is that the purpose behind social value *feels* like it should be the most simple thing in the world. It supports a very human drive for fairness. To share resources and help.

Do we have a word for that? Can that be measured?

At the recent Social Value Conference, as part of the ‘Holding Ourselves to Account’ panel, I was asked the question: “if you were only able to measure one thing, what would that be?”

I dutifully answered with the obvious (to me) answer of “happiness” and sat back smugly, proud of my succinctness.

It seemed obvious because, at CHY, our philosophy has always been that our collective interventions and endeavours in the social value, social impact, community investment sector is – or should be – to enable people to be happier.

The HMT Greenbook Wellbeing Guidance defines social value as “the sum of all significant costs and benefits that impact the welfare and wellbeing of a population.”
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• Securing a well-paid sustainable job improves an individual’s happiness.
• Learning a new skill improves an individual’s happiness. 
• Access to green space improves an individual’s happiness. 
• Supporting a community through volunteering improves the happiness of both the volunteer and the beneficiary. 

However.

On the long journey home I started to unpick the statement and my smugness began to unravel a little bit. 

What do I actually want to achieve through my work, and through our work at CHY? 

I want to reduce economic and health inequality by eradicating poverty – bringing people up, instead of pushing them down. I want to improve everyone’s quality of life.  

If we take happiness as our only measure, well, we could do that by helping the rich get richer – allowing them to improve their quality of life. But that would increase economic and health inequality, which is the exact opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.

So what could we measure instead? 

Life Expectancy? Suicide rates? Income inequality? GDP per Capita? GVA per Capita?

If you could only choose one thing, what would you choose? 

We’d love to know!

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