Social Purpose: maximising value and impact

Many housing providers are undertaking significant organisational change, substantial restructuring, new teams and ambitious plans. Others are taking significant steps to stay strong in increasingly turbulent times. This poses a challenge to ensuring providers remain true to their charitable objectives and social purpose.

Housing associations have always had a social purpose; their charitable objectives require it and their business success demands it. But how do you maximise the impact of an organisation’s Values and social purpose across all business units, on customers and communities?

Mainstreaming social purpose requires the alignment of organisational Values with service design, development and delivery, by building on existing resources, staff and money. In this way, delivering social outcomes maximises value in areas of strategy, personnel, and organisational culture. This improves the capacity to deliver services, builds a strong brand and positive reputation, and strengthens the relationship with customers.

HACT is offering support to housing providers who want to explore how they can reinvent their core social purpose, ensuring it is fit and flexible enough for a new era, a changed set of conditions, circumstances and expectations. HACT has developed a two stage, multi-faceted process that involves internal capacity building, and leverages our expansive and diverse networks of ideas-rich partners.

There are two stages to the work and the main outputs will be:

Stage 1

  • A preliminary diagnostic, summarising the capacity, resource and business data available and the gaps that remain
  • A Stage 2 Brief, outlining what is required to deepen and develop business-wide social purpose

Stage 2

  • A Social Purpose Framework, providing the strategic direction and operational delivery of social purpose across the business by providing realistic and achievable actions

An additional output of the work will be to bring housing providers together to develop a Social Purpose Peer Network to share, advise and inform social purpose development at a sector level.

Cost: Stage 1 is £4,750. Should you wish to progress to Stage 2, the additional cost is £9,500, giving a total cost for both Stages of £14,250. If you have less than 8,000 homes cost reductions are available, so please get in touch.

Approximate timescales: Stage 1 will take two to four months, and Stage 2, four to six months, depending on resource availability and desired pace.

To receive the full proposal with a detailed explanation of methodology and approach, or to discuss the project further, please contact: