What is Social Value Brokerage?
Social Value Brokerage is an umbrella term used to describe the connecting of key stakeholders to ensure local communities benefit from public procurement in their area and to create local economic growth. Stakeholders typically include: public sector organisations, such as councils; government suppliers, tendering for public sector contracts; and local community based organisations, some of whom may be tendering for government contracts.
What does it look like?
Brokerage is all about making connections for mutual benefit, and this can be done ‘manually’ – connecting organisations via email, telephone or in person (for example, through a ‘Meet the Funders’ event, or other physical marketplace. And it can also happen online, for example at here at the Social Value Exchange, or via our partners Supply Change or our friends at Connected Voice.
What does matching in brokerage mean?
As we know, brokerage is all about making connections that result in mutual benefits, and matching often takes place in Social Value Brokerage. For example, matches between suppliers and local community projects to, in effect, co-produce community benefits. Or matching contract opportunities with local social enterprises or, similarly, the opening up of prime contractor supply chains to local providers.
How does technology play a role?
Brokering or matching up local stakeholders is not particularly complicated, but it can be labour intensive. Digital technology massively reduces costs, enables faster collection and analysis of data and removes human error. Put simply, you can do more with less.
Why is it important?
It’s important because Social Value offers a way of creating community benefits and inclusive growth – local communities and local social enterprises need to be at the heart of that if it’s going to work, and brokerage is all about getting these types of organisations into the driving seat.
How does it fit into the procurement process?
In a couple of ways that we know about. Firstly, you can broker contract opportunities for local social enterprises – either manually through your own networks or via online platforms like Supply Change. Or, during the tender process, you can match up local community groups with suppliers to co-produce community benefits, which is what takes place on the Social Value Exchange.
Are there any resources I can use to get going?
Social Value UK, the national Social Value membership body, is running Social Value Brokerage training sessions – see here for further details.
What is the Social Value Act?
The Social Value Act gained Royal Assent in March 2012 and came into effect in January 2013. The legislation offers the framework by which contracting authorities can compel their suppliers to create additional community benefits, above and beyond the core specification of the contract, through the public procurement process.
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Social Value UK (the UK’s Social Value membership body) is running Social Value Brokerage training sessions throughout August. You can get your tickets here.
Please get in touch if you have any questions about these FAQs – hello@socialvalueexchange.org