Critical Mass Journal: Members Exchange
The Social Value Members Exchange was an energetic morning catching up with other National Member networks to gain a snapshot of what the Social Value atmosphere is like around the world, looking at: what we’ve done so far, plans for the future and talking about how to grow the network.
Jeremy Nicholls opened the morning reflecting on the discussions from Critical Mass re: the risk of hype, methodological and tactical issues around developing these networks and the call for standardization and a principles based framework we can share.
Being the newbies to the international network we were encouraged by the response to how our network has progressed in just four months. We came a long way to join up with these fellow networks and the Critical Kiwis were in action news reporting mode interviewing and capturing extremely valuable insights from some of these masterminds across the globe – stay tuned for our video feature coming soon with interviews from some of these networks all over the world. Business cards were dished out from Hong Kong, Russia, Italy, UK, USA, Hungary, The Netherlands, Turkey and others. It was an invaluable experience for us, as a young network, to share and see what’s going on and to put faces to names and build relationships with these individuals and networks we will be sharing the exciting journey ahead with.
Communicating Social Value and SROI was a great conversation to share at the round table discussions. How can we make a Social Value report inspirational and exciting to stakeholders? We talked about better using graphics and stories to share and report these changes and looked at ways social media and technology can help us to find innovative ways to connect with each other and stakeholders.
Some key highlights from around the world:
As the most mature network it was great to hear the Social value UK journey and how it has continued to grow and develop and set an example for the rest of the networks and also support and share insights.
Moving forward and developing these networks – sharing a common language is very important. Italy is currently working on a glossary which will pull together a common language for stakeholders.
Establishing the Social Value brand and having that recognized around the world is very important. Social Value UK, and SV International have some slick new branding refreshed websites.
David Pritchard, who has a huge amount of experience in the Social Value sector, has just branched out into the USA and is starting to evaluate the purpose and role of the network over there in a market that is so huge and well-established.
Hong Kong has been very active in connecting and collaborating on a regional level working closely with Japan and UK and have seen excellent growth in just two years.
A few of the networks have been stagnated in recent months and this event was an immensely valuable chance to reignite the Social Value flame and pass on the passion so that we can bring this movement to the forefront of change and embed it into business as usual.