Global Value Exchange 2.0: different outcomes for different purposes

Since 2011 the Global Value Exchange (GVE) has been crowd sourcing metrics (outcomes, indicators and valuations) that people are using to measure social impact. We will be releasing GVE2.0 this year, which builds on the existing functionality of the site. In 2014 we realised that within the outcomes section of the site there were two very distinct types emerging:

1)  ‘Summary level outcomes’ - these are often part of a set and aligned with an investors objective. They are always positive outcomes and tend to be quite broad e.g. “Improved mental health” or “Increased employment”. The reason they have been designed is for aggregating impact across multiple interventions.

2)  ‘Decision making outcomes’ - these are much more detailed outcomes and are unique to the intervention. They include intended and unintended outcomes and so some are negative e.g. “is able to deal with mild bouts of depression with no medication” or “has not found sustainable employment”. The reason these outcomes exist is for delivery staff to manage the outcomes and re-design services to maximise the impact.

In order to respond to these obviously very different needs of users, we have built GVE2.0 to incorporate these two types of outcomes and help delivery organisations collect the information they need for managing impact and help investors collect the information they need to aggregate impact.

We wanted to reverse the fact that many social purpose organisations focus their impact measurement on the summary level outcomes and often don’t work on the delivery level outcomes. GVE 2.0 allows for both types of outcomes to co-exist. The re-designed platform has differentiated the two types of outcomes and enabled users to connect the two. It does this through two new service layers:

1)  myGVE - for delivery organisations designed to help manage their impact

2)  myGVEportfolio - for investors designed to help aggregate impact

myGVE: This layer allows a user to create a project and start adding information. There are three steps that users go through. Step one: Users are prompted to ask their stakeholders; “what has changed for you?” and then enter these delivery level outcomes onto the ‘Stakeholder board’. Step two: Users enter the summary level outcomes that they report to their investors. Step three: Users are asked to combine the first two steps by creating a chain of events. These chains visually demonstrate the link between the two types of outcomes.

myGVEportfolio: This layer has been designed for the investor and aggregates all of the information that has been entered on the myGVE layer by its investees. The investor has access to a dashboard displaying all of the projects that have used their summary outcomes. An investor is able to see which projects are achieving which outcomes at an aggregated level but also offers them the opportunity to drill further down into each project and examine the detailed information that their investees are collecting.

If you are interested in finding out more about GVE2.0 you can get started today:

www.globalvaluexchange.org or contact Ben directly on ben.carpenter@socialvalueuk.org.