How to achieve your social value objectives

It’s a well known fact that measuring social value is tricky. While there are several ways to show the benefits of it (see our founder Mike Saunders’ thoughts here), there simply isn’t one ‘industry standard’ method.

So how useful is ‘social value?’ By nature, it’s a difficult concept to measure as the contributing factors aren’t easy to articulate and answers will vary wildly depending on who you ask. For example, how would you value your local park by its impact on your well-being?

How does Commonplace work with clients to achieve their social value objectives? 

Simple: we take the uncertainty out of the equation as social value is inherently about communities as a whole.

You can gather a range of community data on our platform which helps provide insight and compare your social value framework against the communities’ priorities. Think about it this way: evaluating social value would be incredibly hard without first engaging the community around it.

This month, Commonplace Founder Mike Saunders spoke to Tpas the Tenant Engagement Experts, about delivering social value in regeneration projects. Mike’s talk highlighted how digital tools can make it easier to encourage tenant engagement by building better relationships and helping you to make better-informed decisions.  

“At Commonplace, our passion is to use digital as part of a suite of tools to manage relationships with communities, residents, tenants, and anyone interested in shaping better places”. 

However, too often the importance of engaging communities is just not realised. Knowing who to speak to and exactly how to engage them can be challenging. Luckily, an online platform can help bridge this gap in several ways: 

1. Help reach your target audience: Use social media and existing stakeholder networks to engage diverse audiences
2. Encourage meaningful engagement: Ensure that engagement is meaningful by using the data to understand exactly who you’re talking to and what they need.
3. Gather robust data: Live-monitoring of data allows you to spot trends quickly and make decisions accordingly.
4. Get the community invested: Get consent for change by closing the loop and showing the community exactly how their feedback has helped shape plans.

For more information about how Commonplace can help engage your community and reach your social value goals, please just get in touch.

Organise a free personalised demo of the Commonplace platform.