Australian Social Value Bank
Homes North has been contracted by the Housing Alliance to lead the development and launch of the Australian Social Value Bank. One of the key objectives of the Housing Alliance is innovation. We believe that by pooling our resources and skills we can achieve much more than we can as individual organisations. The development of a Social Value Bank for Australia by the Housing Alliance is a great example of the two concepts of innovation and collaboration in action. The philosophy behind a social value bank aligns strongly with Housing Alliance members. The Australian Social Value Bank aims to reframe the way social programs are designed and evaluated and puts well-being outcomes for the community front and centre. The genesis of an Australian Social Value Bank came about during a study tour of the UK undertaken by Housing Alliance CEOs in late 2014. Having seen how the bank works in the UK the CEOs decided to find out if the product could be developed for Australia, with positive results!
The Housing Alliance, through our company Alliance Social Enterprises, has partnered with Simetrica, the developer of the UK Social Value Bank, to bring an equivalent product to Australia. Daniel Fujiwara is the eminently qualified Director of Simetrica, and in mid-2016 travelled to Australia to introduce the Social Value Bank concept and present a masterclass on measuring social impact. The Housing Alliance’s development of the bank reflects our values with the aim to make the bank widely accessible. Overtime it will have an extensive and comprehensive list of well-being values. By expanding the values in the bank the Australian Social Value Bank will become applicable to a wide range of industries, profit and not-for-profit, and Government. Through this widespread use the bank has the potential to foster more targeted service delivery and philanthropic activities, by taking better account of the well-being of individuals within financial decision making processes.