opening keynote presentation at Social Value UK's MexEx23 conference - exploring the realities and risks of placing financial valuations on the impacts and outcomes that organisations create.

1. 'Valuation – how changing trends amongst
commissioners and funders are making it the dark
side of impact reporting...’
(and how we might start to make it better?)
There are 101 ways to value outputs, outcomes, and impacts - but how do we
make sense of what these 'valuations' really mean?
Exploring some of the usually un-talked-about dimensions of what can happen
when we start to place valuations on what happens as a result of our work, the
challenges of doing so, and the risks that this has in distorting how we manage
future services and activities.
https://linktr.ee/adrianashton

3. Alignment to TOMs, HACT, etc
• Consistency of approach with others
• Misses ‘bigger picture’ / what may be more important
to wider communities we’re part of
• Only values from one perspective (the person who
created them)

4. Who are we valuing it for?
• Who are we valuing it for?
• Commissioners priorities always in flux
• ‘we manage what we measure’
• how do valuations help us keep our communities at
the centre of our work?
• How do we know that this is the best way to reflect
with them on what’s most important to them?

5. If we do publish the £ figure
• Context usually missing – what is the £ equivalent to?
• £12,000 = recruiting an NHS nurse
• ‘empty soundbite’ / greenwashing

6. Benchmarking – making sense of the £
• The beer factor
• (regional economic variation)
• Circumstances of beneficiary
• (usual cost to fix a roof vs when its
kids’ bedroom)

7. What’s the length of the coastline of the UK?
• Cliff edge
• Beach
• Tide in/out?
• Rockpools?
• ‘Shifting sands’
• therefore the principles is what we should be
prioritising?