nef consulting’s very own Nic Marks got a mention in Forbes magazine this week when Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, was asked to make his seven top picks for the year’s best ideas.

We are very excited that businesses and organisations are starting to take notice of well-being. But what does well-being at work look like and how can it be improved? This is the challenge that Nic and nef consulting are working on at the moment with Delivering Happiness in the US.

We are developing the next generation Well-being@Work survey, and are devising an intuitive DIY tool that individuals, teams and organisations can use to accurately identify levels of well-being and, most importantly, set about improving them.

It will be launched in January 2012. If you would like to learn more or share ideas in the meantime, please contact Jody – jody.aked@nef-consulting.co.uk

Growing a social enterprise? We want to let you know there is a new free service: arc.

An initiative of Business in the Community, arc provides a unique, comprehensive package of in-depth long-term engagement with large established businesses to help you expand your business. arc is designed to help social enterprises benefit from unprecedented business opportunities following the London 2012 Olympics.

The application is only open until Friday November 4th; find out more about the support or contact Matt Lill at arc with any questions.

 Jonathan Schifferes is presenting a webinar at midday on Thursday 6th October. The subject is "SROI: measuring social value. How does it work and could it work for me?". This is organised through the NHS Institute for Innovation: click here to register and for more information.

nef and nef consulting are launching an exciting new initiative: the SROI Centre for Excellence. We want to collate and promote the collective intelligence on social value that exists among practitioners and our partners. Through the Centre for Excellence we want to ensure that Social Return On Investment is synonymous with excellence in evaluation and appraisal. Our first major initiative is a series of new SROI Masterclasses. Read more about the Centre for Excellence here.

 An exciting partnership has begun between the consultancy and the Community Sector Council (CSC) in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Embarking on a year-long pilot project co-financed by provincial and federal governments and CSC, nef consulting's Natalie Nicholles and Jonathan Schifferes will support 15 community organisations to demonstrate their value using the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology. 

To find out about CSC visit www.communitysector.nl.ca

nef consulting's Natalie Nicholles and Olivier Vardakoulias will be co-facilitating a technical discussion organised by the International HIV Aids Alliance and funded by the World Bank on how to determine an appropriate method to understanding the VfM of community-based HIV/Aids interventions.  Taking place in London in July and bringing together major players in delivery and funding of HIV/Aids interventions, this event is highly significant because it will be exploring how to evidence complex interventions with interrelated outcomes and their relationship to the costs involved with the aim of aiding long term decision making and resource allocation. Attendees include the World Bank, DFID, UNAids, USAids, UK Consortium on Aids and International Development, National Institute for Clinical Excellence amongst others.

On Tuesday 13th July, Jonathan Schifferes of nef consulting will join a panel, including Lisa Nandy MP, discussing the changing landscape of education provision. Catch22 will discuss the work with young people at risk of, or already excluded from school, and Jonathan will cover social return on investment: how it can be, and has been, used to measure and value outcomes and impact in this sector.

For more details, and to register for this webinar, follow the link to Catch22's website.

Would you like to work on our team? Do you know somebody who would? We are hiring for two positions: a consultant who will lead projects and develop new relationships, and an analyst who will be an expert in research methods and comfortable crunching data.

Both positions close 29th June 2011. Contact Alison Mulholland alison.mulholland@neweconomics.org or on 0207 820 6300.

Download the full job description and application forms:

Consultant

Analyst

New company Global Ethics says they donate 100% of its profits to health and santitation programmes in Malawi. Mixing good business with good development is tricky- as is ensuring economic viability for 'socially' responsible products in a recession. Read Natalie's nef blog about what Global Ethics is doing to meet these challenges and what she thinks about this model of 'new business'.

nef (new economics foundation) has published a report to explore the tricky concept of attribution in Social Return on Investment (SROI).  Drawing on nef's action-based research and nef consulting's experience of applying of SROI to various sectors and structures, the report doubles up as a handy guide for organisations who really want to understand their in role in creating change in people’s lives.  It is free to download here.