The procurement act came into play on Monday 24th February 2025, and how organisations set, track and report on social value commitments will be under the spotlight. A new, entirely free tool is making it possible for well-intended businesses of all shapes and sizes to get on the front-foot.
The recent launch and expansion of this progressive valuation platform, MeasureUp, is tackling one of the most difficult challenges around assessing social value head-on: how to value real impact in a meaningful way.
By sharing publicly-available data and useful resources – usually hidden behind paywalls – this bold move by partners Impact Reporting, State of Life and PRD, supports the social value community’s drive for greater transparency.
Social value is an emerging field and, at present, there are no perfect solutions. Both the recent National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) and the new PPN 002 Social Value Model recommend refining approaches to social value “to suit the condition of the market and your contract, based on feedback in your market engagement.”
With the differing limitations of frameworks (Social Value Model / Procurement Policy PPN 06/20, the National TOMs Framework and others), MeasureUp’s aim is to counteract this by offering another, more rounded picture of social and environmental valuation that supports continuous improvement.
Users are encouraged to adopt a blended approach to measurement – supplementing their current methodologies to include some of the lesser understood impact initiatives that are not easily captured by some frameworks. For SMEs and VCSEs (voluntary, community and social enterprises), in particular, MeasureUp removes the need for costly subscriptions and, in doing so, supports part of the procurement act’s intention of creating a leveller playing field in public sector bidding.
Matt Haworth, co-founder of Impact Reporting and MeasureUp, explains: “We want to progress the social value agenda by helping organisations move away from merely counting outputs to measuring the true outcomes of their initiatives.
“MeasureUp helps showcase the value of less conventional activities that could in fact be game-changing for a particular community. Besides focusing on easier-to-quantify schemes, such as apprenticeships and volunteering, we’re working hard to explore and evidence the impact of other known wellbeing factors – for instance, adult learning for work, engaging in youth activities, improving housing, or providing access to green spaces.”
MeasureUp has also been developed to help protect users from unintentionally ‘purpose-washing’. The team has assessed thousands of data points and dug through research to provide an antidote to irrelevant or unsubstantiated claims. This work enables decision-makers to better prioritise their efforts and benchmark seemingly incomparable activities.
For example, the values referenced in the platform show that good mental health is twice as important as physical health; and that volunteering brings half as much of a wellbeing benefit as committing to weekly physical activity. Supporting all of these initiatives is clearly important and the tool now provides companies with a credible means of measuring just how impactful their time, monetary and resource investments could be, while encouraging participation in less tangible – yet hugely positive activities – that may otherwise be ignored.
A work in progress, the valuation framework is continually being updated. It will soon include the impact of wealth inequality on life satisfaction, community wealth-building programmes and fresh perspectives on STEM, digital skills and inclusion.
MeasureUp uses the WELLBY methodology and is aligned to ONS 10 dimensions of wellbeing, the UK government Green Book guidance, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Central Government Social Value Model.
