Westbank: our new approach to Social Return On Investment (SROI), tried and tested in Devon
Over the last year, we have been trialling an innovative approach to impact measurement that combines two approaches that are usually kept well apart – storytelling and Social Return on Investment (SROI). It worked even better than we expected, so we want to share our secret sauce with you.
In a nutshell - instead of modelling a whole organisation from the top down, we built a picture of the organisation’s social return ‘bottom up’ - based on eight real people’s real returns. Every pound in the final figure traces back to a story you can read and a judgement you can argue with.
We’ve been cooking this idea for a while, and had the opportunity to trial it properly when our friends at Westbank in Devon approached us with a very nuanced brief.
This blog outlines how it works, what it found, and why we think every county should have a Westbank.
What’s wrong with traditional SROI?
Social Return on Investment (SROI) is a clever idea - it’s a way of measuring social value using financial proxies, meaning one simple numerical figure can express vast, multidimensional impact, in a currency (the GBP) that any audiences can grasp. It’s not the coolest thing in the world to put a price on the value of a happier person, but if it helps funders and statutory partners to make the right decision, the end justifies the means.
However, SROI has a catch. Or a few. Calculating it properly for a large organisation can be a costly, lengthy process – and on top of that, the calculations are often so complex they become hard to follow, and therefore hard to trust. In practice, the end in fact doesn’t always justify the means.
The costliness and complexity of SROI is a major barrier for the organisations that can benefit from it the most: civil society organisations doing preventative work through a holistic model. Prevention is the best approach to health, but the hardest thing in the world to evidence, because its value lies in the things that didn't happen. It’s easy to take for granted the invisible but vital work of organisations supporting people to stay fit and healthy so that, let’s say, a fall isn’t even on the cards for them for another 10-20 years. These organisations are already chronically underfunded compared to what they deserve. Spending lots of money on a big SROI study that may or may not convince statutory partners to value them as they should is a big risk - and a cost that perhaps shouldn’t be falling to them..
A Devon-based organisation, Westbank, who embody the best of the best when it comes to preventative health came to us facing this predicament. Together, we seized an opportunity to try something new.
About Westbank as an organisation
We've known about Westbank for a while. They're a holistic, preventive, multi-service organisation based in Devon, working to promote health and wellbeing across all ages. In the last three years, they have supported more than 40,000 people across the South West – people facing isolation, ill health, the weight of caring for someone else, and a statutory system that's hard to navigate, especially when you're already worn down, vulnerable or exhausted.
Westbank runs eight services from a hillside outside Exeter: transport, a community gym, health walks, a community hub, a cookery school, carers support, social prescribing and volunteering.
These services feed into each other synergistically and organically. Transport feeds the gym. The gym feeds the walks. Social prescribing feeds the larders, the hub and the carers service. People move between three or four services without a single cross-boundary referral, because it is all one organisation, one building, one relationship.
Which is exactly what made it a good test. Westbank came to us with a problem: although their services synergistically complement each other, it was proving tricky to capture and convey their multifaceted impact succinctly and to multiple audiences.
What we did differently
Human beings have a natural aptitude for following, and remembering, stories. Back when we co-produced the Carers Trust SROI Calculator, we spotted the opportunity to combine the best of two typically quite different approaches to impact measurement and evaluation: storytelling and SROI.
We decided to focus on eight real people's stories and calculate the social value that has been generated through and for them IRL. The eight calculations are grounded in reality – they were based on outcomes we know for certain have actually transpired for real people.
We identified an 'archetype' service user for each of the eight service areas. We interviewed each of these eight people to draw out their story – how Westbank's support has impacted them directly, the knock-on effect on other aspects of their lives and the people around them, as well as what would have likely happened to them if the support hadn't been there.
Then, for every outcome in every story, we asked four questions:
What's it worth? We found a financial proxy – which was sometimes clear, like a physio appointment that wasn't needed, or sometimes we leant on established sources, such as the HACT UK Social Value Bank.
How much of it was Westbank? Almost nobody's life changes because of one organisation. Family, other services and the person's own effort all contribute.
Would it have happened anyway? Some people would have got part of the way there regardless, so we made deductions for that.
Does it last? For anything lasting more than a year we shave the value down annually, because benefits fade with distance from the thing that caused them.
These eight examples tell a striking story in their own right, as deep dives. What’s more, we were also able to approximate the SROI of each service and of the organisation as a whole, by reviewing the rest of Westbank’s impact data.
Meet Diana - one of the deep dives
Diana had always been active, sport had been central to her identity for as long as she could remember and her working life had been busy, sociable and purposeful. In a short period, a serious health event took her physical capacity, her professional role, and the social world that had been built around both. She came home from hospital to find that the things that had defined her – movement, usefulness, people – were no longer reliably available. She was in pain. She was waiting for NHS support that was slow to arrive. She was, by her own account, becoming someone she didn't recognise.
After two ten-week courses at Westbank's community gym, Diana was walking normally, off painkillers, and going up stairs without thinking about it. Her strength and balance were coming on leaps and bounds. The things she'd given up – walking on uneven ground, carrying shopping, moving through the world without calculating the risk – came back to her. Now she volunteers there herself.
Every £1 invested in Diana generated £18.40 of social value, rising to £37.10 over five years, because the negative outcomes avoided are a gift that keeps giving.
That is the whole method in miniature: a story you can picture, and a number you can understand.
Why it works so well
We’re really proud to have discovered this new approach to SROI and we’d love to help other organisations make the most of the approach.
Here’s what makes it so great:
The counterfactual comes from the person. In SROI, our judgement of what would have happened without the support of the organisation usually rests on a modelled assumption. Here it rests on what eight people told us about a life they did not go on to live. For preventative work, we think that is better evidence.
You can follow the whole chain. Every calculation attaches to a person you have just read about. You can see what we counted, what we left out, and why – and disagree with us. Trust in a number comes from being able to understand it and check it.
People remember it. A ratio evaporates on the way to the car park. A person with outcomes priced up doesn't. Give a commissioner both and they leave with an argument they can repeat.
It costs less. A full conventional SROI on an organisation this size is a long, expensive job. We were able to produce this report on a much smaller budget.
What we found
We found that Westbank to have an impressively high SROI, creating huge (but otherwise invisible) savings for the NHS and local authority. You can review the figures in the report when it’s out (soon!)
But the number is not the interesting part. The interesting part is why it is so high – and why the true value is likely to be even higher. That is the other thing a person-by-person method gives you: not just a figure, but an explanation.
Why everywhere needs a Westbank
Anyone working in public services or the social sector knows the thing we all struggle to act on: the need for preventative support which treats each individual as a whole person, who typically has a range of complex needs, and who, once vulnerable, will struggle to navigate the system on their own. The woman recovering from a stroke also cannot get to her gym rehabilitation classes, and is also becoming isolated, and also has a husband on the verge of giving up work to drive her there.
Treat that as four referrals to four organisations and you get four partial results and an exhausted individual who wants to give up. Treat a person as a whole person, through one front door, and you get a recovery, genuine transformation, and a person who wants to give back to the community around them. This is what Westbank does – and somehow they make it look effortless (although it is not).
The returns compound because Westbank does not just run the rehabilitation programme; it removes the barriers stopping people from reaching it, and adds the social support that turns a course of exercises into a changed life. When that person then becomes a volunteer, the positive changes are locked in. Prevention that wraps around a whole person keeps paying out for years.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan asks for a shift from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention. Andy Burnham's Big Conversation on Care is asking the country what an integrated system should look like.
Here is our answer: you do not need to invent it. A holistic, community-based, preventative model already exists – on a hillside outside Exeter, largely run by volunteers, and in several cases funded by nobody at all. It is already doing, at neighbourhood scale, what the plan describes. It is also subsidising the statutory system rather than being subsidised by it.
Value what you have. Fund what you have. Westbank is not a nice-to-have. It is essential health and wellbeing infrastructure, and it deserves to be funded like it.
Could this approach work for you?
If your organisation has the same problem Westbank had – layered, multidimensional impact that's hard to explain – then this approach would work well for you. It's faster and cheaper than a full conventional SROI, and it's based on real stories, and their real outcomes, that are easy to follow and connect with.
We're using it with two more organisations now - Rochdale Community Centre Consortium and Proper Good in Wigan - and we'd happily use it with more. We'd love to hear from you.
