David Mullins and Vanessa Wilkes, TSRC, University of Birmingham
Housing providers: evidencing their social impact
HACT Round Table Discussion
10:00am - 1.45pm on 7 June 2012, London

• Investing for Social Purpose in C19– Remember
Peabody, Guinness? – implicit social enterprise model
• Social Investors of the 1920s – COPEC & Miss Fenter’s CI
(financial inclusion and youth diversionary) activities!
• 1960s Cathy Come Home – housing as social movement
– homelessness and neighbourhood renewal
• 1997 Giddens/Blair Social investment state – HAs as
Social Investment Agencies – ‘from housing plus-CI’
• 2002 In Business for Neighbourhoods – sector rebranding - CI symbol of independent social purpose
• 2000s Government promotion of social enterprise &
SROI across third sector
• Never forget the impact of secure affordable homes!!

• 2008 First NHF Neighbourhood Audit – first picture of extent of CI (actually quite marginal to housing investment & management in most organisations but £435 million invested across sector, £272m from own resources)
• 2010 TSA Study – Community investment performance management toolkit for housing organisations - no golden bullet – wide range of tools - make or buy?
• 2011 Second NHF Neighbourhood Audit – important high level indication of change - but still mainly inputs & outputs
• 2010-13 PhD Study – from inputs & outputs to outcomes and impacts Understanding why and how housing associations measure the social impact of their community investment activities (supported by NHF and engaging with HACT)

• Anglo-Dutch trawl of approaches to measurement– 17 tools identified to plan, manage & measure CI activities
• G15 Roundtables – scope and plans for measurement
• 8 case studies – 4 internal tools, 4 off-shelf
• Approach influenced by scale, type & organisation of CI & level (individual, project, programme, corporate, sector)
• Towards Impact - Considerable interest in moving from inputs/outputs to outcomes/impacts
• No established practice - Adaptation and use of wide range of tools – choices often a condition of grant funding
• NHF Audit – led to common scoping & classification activities across sector – but significant differences in range of activities and ambitions of different HAs
• Launch of Community Impact Tracker as sector tool – would this standardise – enable benchmarking?

‘ need more than a good
• Projects – main focus, moving to harder quantitative story now to fund CI’.
approach alongside case studies
• Programmes – external accountability to funders, some strategies & theming – common reporting. Some move to standardisation & KPIs
• Corporate Overview – weakly developed – CI not on balanced scorecards – BITC, SROI, Social Audit being explored by a few
• Collaborative planning – weakly developed – organisational measures a barrier to collaboration? –credit claiming – going it alone
• Area Based – not much progress- floor standards, neighbourhood profiles looking dated- difference between nationals & community based HAs
• Ex-ante
– Dutch focus on planning and goal setting – independent SEs?
• Ex-post
– English focus on monitoring – regulatory mindset?
• Toolkit
– no single tool meets all the aims – distance travelled tools for individual impacts – project management tools– corporate & sector indicators – collaborative planning tools (such as Outcomes Arena)

• ‘Fences coming down’ – need for self-steering (more of a Dutch approach needed?)
• CI mainstreamed from ‘CSR extra’ to ‘core business ’
• Economic crisis – need to harness the local £
• HAs as SEs and as incubators of community and tenant based SEs
• 2012-13 Welfare Reforms – urgency of financial inclusion work
• ASB – recognition of CI investment in ‘diversionary activity’ (remember Miss Fenter) to include in cost benefit analysis of ASB responses (HouseMark)

‘making sure people enjoy the
• Society led – responsive & consultative projects’.
(measures set with residents and communities)
• Partnership led – LSPs & community commissioning (measures set with LA and community partners)
• Strategy led – strategic themes set priorities = synergies with core business - (measures set corporately) “CI washes its face”
• Market led – the commissioning game – Supply chains and all that)- often based on individuals rather than neighbourhoods
“If its not in the
–(measures set by contracts) contract we don’t do it”

- 34 Respondents
- Self selecting organisations and interviewees
- Telephone interview in November 2011
The stage of measurement activity
Size of housing association
Not started any formal measurement and looking around for tools
Medium
Medium-Large 3
Fairly new to measuring and waiting to see what results the current tools give them
1
Large
10,000-29,999
30,000-49,999
50,000+
1
2
1
7 respondents
1
1
1
4 respondents
Currently measuring but aware that need to make the tools / indicators better
Have established measurement systems and are able to see the benefits
1
1
4
3
1
10 respondents
3
5
3
2
13 respondents

External
• Wider third sector interest
• Shift from ‘monitoring’ to
‘impact’
• High profile networks
– SROI
– Inspiring Impact
– Think tanks
• Economic climate
• Funders
• “Keeping up” with the sector
Internal
“Prove we are making a difference”
• Accountability
– Tenants
– Boards
• Validate social as well as economic value
• Growing importance and integration of community investment
• Increased desire to understand neighbourhoods …. and see if making a difference
“If it’s not measured, it’s not done”

• Wide and varied approaches
… in tools and methodologies
No formal tool used
A mix of internal and
15% external tools
9%
Internally
35%
Paper based systems
Externally
41%
SROI across 4 countries
• Externally developed tools include:
• Advice Pro; Balance Scorecard; Business In The Community;
CITs; CP Tracker; CR Tracker; Lamplight; Social accounting;
SROI; Views (formerly SPRS)

“What does good look like”
• Whilst doing:
– Resources
– Skills
– Understanding complex methodologies or tools
– Development of outcomes measures
– Development of financial proxies
– Confidence (or lack of) in reporting results
• Whilst thinking about it:
– No perfect off the shelf answer
– Different tools for different types of projects
• Too much choice .versus.
• no knowledge of the options
– Waiting for the golden bullet
– Drawing on external resources, consultants, networks
– Inter HA discussion “A common problem”
Overlapping

Why do it?
• Accountability
• Self evaluation
• Using the data
– for learning
– in bidding
• Layers of measurement
– Impact of some or all activities?
– Impact as whole organisation?
Caveats
• Importance of marginal work
• Funders demands
– Use of data
– What is useful?
• Is it always appropriate and useful?
– To housing associations
– To them

• Steep learning curve
– Build on what achieved, expand breadth and depth
• Ambiguity in …
– Methodology
– Proxy values (e.g. SROI database)
– Assessment does not give a definite answer
– But … opens up debate
• Tension between ‘doing’ and measuring
– Expectation of partners involvement
• Manage expectations
• Promotes a culture change
• A shared problem

Response
No
Yes
Reason
Happy with current tool
Waiting to see the success of the one we are currently using
Looking around for alternative tool(s)
External tool users
8
Internal tool users
0
1
2 7
Further develop the current tool(s)
Don’t know
TOTAL
Total Respondents: 26 hact research
1
2
14
2
3
12
- Need to move towards measuring outcomes (rather than outputs) and social impact
- Need to keep up to date with new tools and methodologies
- Need to investigate the functionality of our current tools

“Chaotic progress”
• Overall Strategy
– Demonstrating the economic as well as the social contribution of RSLs (not just community investment)
– More Group structures adopting a joined-up approach
• Resources
– The need for appropriate time and resources
– Analytical skills
– Specialisation of roles

cont..
• Methodologies
– An area which needs improving
– Recognition that the complexity of some approaches may not fit all organisations / social enterprises
– Development of joint indicators
– Greater use of proxy indicators
– More methodological project planning /theory of change
– Arena for ‘challenges’ within projects to be addressed

• Value of standardisation within housing sector v common approaches cross-sector?
• Does measurement inhibit or enable collaboration?
• How do aims of CI and delivery models (society led, partnership led, strategy led, market led) affect approaches to measurement?
• Is social impact of HAs just about CI or about whole business impact? (where are the measures of social impact of secure affordable housing?)

• How do motivations affect type of impact measurement (external v internal drivers)
• Should we wait for ‘golden bullet’ to solve problems at a sector level?
• How can progress become less chaotic?
• What support resources do different types of
HAs need?
• What can we best do together?

For further info on TSA study, HACT survey and
PhD please contact us at TSRC:
• d.w.mullins@bham.ac.uk
• vew930@bham.ac.uk