Last night The Crown Estate published evidence of its #TotalContribution, with a launch at its Quadrant 3 development on Regent Street. Download the report here.

Since October 2012, nef consulting has been working with The Crown Estate on measuring the social, economic and environmental contribution to the UK. Key findings showed the following combined total of direct, indirect and enabled contribution:

• The Crown Estate supported 94,000 jobs
• Contributed £5,233 million to the UK economy (gross value)
• Averted 4m tCO2e of carbon through activities on our portfolio.

Mark Gough, Head of Sustainability for The Crown Estate said: "For us, Total Contribution is the next step in understanding the broader contribution we deliver to the UK. Developing this new approach has helped us explore our role as a land manager and the responsibility and influence this brings and it will be invaluable in ensuring we continue to drive a sustainable, commercially successful business."

The Crown Estate is one of 85 global businesses piloting Integrated Reporting. 

nef consulting has completed the second report of a three year study into the impact of Near Neighbours, a £5m DCLG-funded programme delivered by the Church Urban Fund to increase social interaction and social action between people of different faiths and no faith.

The research has involved several hundred stakeholder interviews and data analysis of several thousand responses to our Social Fabric Questionnaire. 

The interim report highlights differences in social trust, and in the religious diversity of friendship groups, between the four parts of England where Near Neighbours operates. 

Read the interim report here.

The Code of Good Impact Practice is being launched for consultation on 19 February 2013. The Code is the product of consultation with nef consulting and stakeholders from across the non-profit sector and aims to provide clear, broad, and agreed guidelines of good impact practice for non-profit organisations. These guidelines are set-out as a series of principles that relate to a cycle of impact practice.

Each principle includes a brief description of what ‘good’ looks like, an explanation of why it’s important, and ideas for how you could apply the principle in practice. The Code is intended to help non-profit organisations, funders and commissioners in forming realistic and appropriate understandings of what good impact practice looks like for non-profit organisations.

How to respond to this stage of the consultation: You should download and read the current version of the Code of Good Impact Practice before responding to the consultation survey. The Code, survey, and guidance around the consultation can all be found on the Inspiring Impact website (www.inspiringimpact.org/code-of-good-impact-practice/)

Value for money is currently the key debate in government circles. It has largely been thrust back into the public consciousness as a result of the current public sector focus on decreasing budgets arising from the financial crisis of the past four years. While the Department for International Development (DFID) has largely escaped the worst of the cuts, it is not immune to the government wide focus on VfM.

nef consulting’s paper seeks to provide the sector with new thinking on how to create a more consistent and practical debate on the implications of demonstrating value for money in international development. Part of our thought-leadership series, New Economics for: Value for Money in International Development follows the success of our 2012 publication New Economics For: Impact Investing.

Download now

nef consulting supported Newlon Fusion, the Community Regeneration partner of Newlon Housing Trust, to undertake a social valuation of its services to unemployed residents. Through outreach workers and links to local courses and support, Newlon Fusion supports residents to become work ready or start their own businesses. Our research helped to understand the outcomes for participants and articulate the wider impacts that the services have on local residents and the wider community.

The research found that the greatest benefits for residents were increased confidence and increased skills for employment/ entrepreneurship. There were also gains for the wider community (the State) through reduced benefit payments and higher taxes. Newlon Fusion are using the results of the research to improve their data collection systems, to better measure outcomes for their residents, and to share the results with their funders.

Newlon Fusion produced this presentation, to illustrate the full report.

Our study on youth unemployment in context can be downloaded here.

We're launching our SROI report on 14 February at Tottenham Town Hall. Click here for details. 

As part of the Inspiring Impact programme, Charities Evaluation Services, alongside nef and a group of over 20 third sector organisations, consultants and academics, are developing a quick and easy tool to help charities and social enterprises work out how well they are doing with monitoring and evaluation. It’s designed to work for all organisations, whatever their size, sector or budget - so if you are looking to improve the way you plan, evidence, and learn from the difference you make in 2013, you might be interested in being a part of the pilot this spring.

Download more information here and an application here, and contact deborah@ces-vol.org.uk by February 8th 2012.

To mark the launch of nef consulting’s new magazine, Perspectives, we are organising an evening of debate and drinks on December 6th, showcasing ways to inspire positive performance in the workplace. The evening will provide plenty of inspiration for leaders, managers, organisational development and human resource professionals, and people striving to make organisations better places to work. If you are interested in attending please contact cam.ly@neweconomics.org.

WHEN? December 6th 2012 at 5.30pm
WHERE? Hub Westminster, New Zealand House, on Haymarket in Central London (nearest tubes Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross)
WHY?
• Listen to a keynote speech from workplace well-being guru Nic Marks.
• Participate in our feature debate: “This Hub believes that how we experience our work is a personal responsibility”. Is it a case of looking after yourself and managing your manager? Or should nurturing be led from the top? …Or is it simply a matter of choosing the right organisation?
• Learn about our work with organisations, putting well-being at the heart of decision making
• Take home a copy of Perspectives Issue 1
…and you can even subject yourself to a spray of oxytocin, popularly thought to increase social trust (or just stick to wine).

You’ll leave with new perspectives, and a better understanding of how organisations have put well-being at work into action.

If you are interested in attending please contact cam.ly@neweconomics.org

Working with CARE International, nef has published a report articulating comparing costs and benefits of investing in climate change adaptation projects. nef consulting conducted primary research in North East Kenya, and provided the analysis and economic modelling for the study.

Climate change impacts are expected to significantly erode part of societies’ economic, social and environmental capitals. Possessing the resources to adapt and develop resilient, sustainable livelihoods exist in developed economies but much less so in developing economies. In an environment of competing financial demands and a drive to ensure that every pound invested is maximised, the critical question is whether investing in adaptation to climate change projects is economically efficient i.e. whether the benefits they create to societies outweigh their implementation and opportunity costs.

The full report is available here, and a blog post from CARE International is here.

Perspectives is our new magazine. Our first edition explores some of the latest insights into human behaviour and how they can help organisations make better decisions. All the articles are free to read online, and you can download a pdf version to read on your mobile or tablet.

The picture that emerges from the latest research is that people are far from being the rational actors that our economic models say we are. Humans evolved to compete and cooperate socially in complex ways, and to react to circumstances according to ‘fast thinking’ rules of thumb, not logic. We develop habits that no longer make sense but which we find hard to break. We take decisions that are in no-one’s interest, least of all our own. And on the whole we are blind to all this irrationality – at least in ourselves.

Behavioural economics examines how this irrationality affects economic choices and it is a booming field. In our consumption patterns we have long been shown to be susceptible to manipulation. Recently, governments have recently taken an interest in behavioural economics as a means to manage the demand for services, understanding citizens as consumers.

Governments increasingly view behavioural economics as a key to unlocking more cost effective ways of helping people achieve the outcomes which they desire.

But most adults are producers as well as consumers. In fact we spend the majority of our waking hours working. And work is often a social activity: we usually produce alongside others, in teams. We started to gather perspectives on this line of inquiry with the premise that individuals at work are just as irrational as individuals at the shopping mall.

How do we form and instil habits within the organisations we work for? How does an organisation balance its instinct to survive while exploring new opportunities? Corporations are not engines that robotically maximise shareholder value; nor are charities machines that blindly deliver an altruistic purpose. Both rely on the power of fallible minds to achieve their goals.we have worked for the last five years to help organisations measure and understand the impact of what they do, and express this in terms of social value.

This first edition of Perspectives stems from our ambition to better understand what makes organisations effective – and that means understanding the individuals that work in them. We recently developed a powerful 10 minute diagnostic tool to start this journey; feel free to try it online at www.happinessatworksurvey.com

Following the publication of the first year of ONS’ National Well-being data, nef and nef consulting have launched a new guide to help third sector organisations measure their impact on well-being. Read our post on the nef blog about the guide. 

Measuring well-being: a guide for practitioners draws on nef consulting's experience measuring subjective well-being for organisations including Catch22, Gingerbread and Carers Trust. Indicators of well-being can help practitioners to:
• improve the design and delivery of projects and services
• target projects and services at the people who are in most need
• tailor provision to suit needs
• support funding applications

The guide explains, step-by-step, how to implement a well-being survey and use its results. We have provided a data comparison calculator which allows groups and organisations to compare their results against the national and regional average responses for the questions we recommend asking: the four questions ONS uses to measure well-being, plus the seven questions which make up the SWEMWBS (the Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale) – a measure of psychological well-being or ‘flourishing’, plus a question on social trust between people.

The Big Lottery Fund has written a case study at the beginning of the guide, highlighting the process of well-being measurement they coordinated with nef through their Well-being Programme.

Sarah Mistry, Head of Research and Learning at Big Lottery Fund (BIG) said:

“At BIG we believe that it is important for the projects we fund to understand, measure and communicate the benefits they have had on people’s well-being. Gathering robust data can help projects to improve their own performance and to show the value of their approach to other funders and commissioners”.

Image: waitscm via Flickr