Meet the latest member of our Advisory Board

As Strategic Account Manager for the Social Value Portal, Sol works with a range of public sector organisations to maximise their community impact. Find out more about his future hopes for delivering social value in our Q&A below. 

What does social value mean to you and why is it important? 

To me, social value is the economic, social and environmental benefits to communities that we are able to unlock and deliver through understanding local needs, collaborating across organisations and sectors and using that to inform how it is delivered. Whether its creating jobs, volunteering in the community or finding innovative solutions to fight the climate emergency, social value one of the tools available to us to do our best to ensure communities aren’t left behind. 

Increasingly, organisations, both public and private, are being asked to do more with less and communities are feeling the strain of the current economic situation coupled with the increasing climate emergency. It has never been more important to ensure that organisations are thinking about how each project, especially publicly funded projects, can also have a impact on the communities they operate within. 

What’s the best example of social value in action that you’ve seen? 

This is really challenging to answer! Through my role I’ve had the pleasure of working with organisations to understand and measure a range of incredible initiatives. Some of the best examples of this took place in and around lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure support was available to those who needed it the most in the community and to support the NHS. 

What do you hope to achieve in your role over the next year? 

What I would really like to achieve is identifying new ways for organisations to deliver innovative and collaborative social value initiatives, especially for smaller organisations who are new to thinking about measuring their social value activity. 

You can learn more about our Advisory Board and its member here