Social Value 101: Building Your Impact Foundation

Here is the cleaned-up transcript. The filler words, repetitions, and minor grammatical typos have been removed, and punctuation has been polished for readability while keeping the original content, tone, and structure completely intact. — **Ann Cronin:** Afternoon, everybody. My name is Ann Cronin. I am the Growth Marketing Manager here at VisibleThread. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started with today’s webinar. A few people are still joining, so I just want to let everyone know that this is being recorded. If you do have to jump out, maybe you want to revisit and listen to another area again, or you want to send it on to a few colleagues, it will be made available for you on demand. For those of you who maybe don’t know VisibleThread or you’re new to us, we’re an RFP platform. We support teams across business development, capture, proposals, contracts, and compliance. We bring the full pursuit lifecycle together from opportunity discovery right through qualification to proposal development, compliance analysis, and contract review. What makes us a bit different is our combination of AI-powered insights with deterministic analysis and full traceability. Because in high-stakes pursuits, “mostly right” just isn’t good enough. For more than fifteen years, we’ve been very privileged that organizations operating in highly competitive and regulated environments have trusted us, VisibleThread, to help them work smarter, reduce risk, and focus more time on winning work. Now, before I introduce our webinar hosts, I want to mention our next upcoming webinar, where we’ll be joined by APMP 40 Under 40 honorees, Marie K. Bland and Hong A Do, who’ve helped lead proposal and strategy initiatives at organizations such as IBM. They’ll share how proposal professionals can use technology, AI, strategy, and strategic thinking to grow their careers, increase their impact, and win within the business. So if you’re thinking about the future of proposal management or maybe your place in it, this isn’t one to miss. There’s a link you’ll see at the bottom where you can register. Beside that, you’ll also see a Q&A box. Take advantage and ask questions; we have left some time at the end to get to those. There’s also a little chat, so if you want to network or drop your LinkedIn in there, please do so. Now, the focus today is firmly on our guests and the expertise they’re bringing to the conversation. With that, I am delighted to introduce you to Joanna Dalgreen, Head of Social Value and Social Return on Investment at London Borough of Waltham Forest, and Caroline Richardson, Divisional Head of Social Value at the Vistry Group, who between them bring a huge amount of experience and insight into social value. So again, thank you for joining us. Joanna, I’ll hand things over to you to get us underway. **Joanna Dalgreen:** Thank you, Ann. Good afternoon everyone, it’s genuinely great to be here. Before we get into anything formal, I want you to just hold on to one idea that we will go through today: every piece of work we deliver—every contract, every project, every initiative—creates impact, whether we design it in that way or not. So really, today is about being intentional. It’s about asking a really important question: if impact is happening anyway, how do we make sure it’s the right impact? This is what social value is all about, and this is what we are going to unpack today. Now, I don’t want to linger too long on policy, but this context really matters. Social value hasn’t just appeared; it’s been building for over a decade. What started the shift was the Social Value Act back in 2012, which asked public bodies to think beyond the cost. Then PPN 06/20 happened, and it really raised the bar and put a real weighting behind it. Now we’ve got the Procurement Act, and we’re at the point where social value—or if you really want to think about it differently, public benefit—is fully embedded. So it’s not just a trend, and it’s not going away. But there’s something I always say: policy tells you what to do, but it doesn’t tell you how to do it well. That gap between the requirements and reality is where most of the challenges sit, but it’s also where the biggest opportunities are. So, let’s talk about the “why” and why social value matters in tenders. Let’s zoom out a bit, because if we only think about social value as a requirement, we’re really missing the point. At its core, this is about shifting the mindset from what we are delivering to what difference it’s actually going to make. When you start asking that second question, everything really changes. Construction projects become a pathway into jobs—and often pathways into jobs for vulnerable and underrepresented communities. A service contract becomes a way to reach people who are often excluded. It starts to connect what we do commercially with what communities truly need. And yes, let’s not ignore the reality: it does win bids. But the organizations that really stand out are the ones where social value isn’t just written into the bids—it’s felt in how they work, how they partner, and how they show up locally. That’s where it becomes real and true. When you talk about social value, I find it quite helpful to simplify it as much as possible because it can get quite jargon-heavy. For me, it comes down to one question: what changes for someone because you are there? Not what you deliver, not what you planned—what actually changed? Did someone get a job? Did a local business grow because of your intervention? Did a community feel more connected or supported? The shift here, which is really, really important, is from activity to outcome. Running a workshop is an activity. Someone progressing into employment is an outcome. Someone being retained in employment is an impact—it’s that long-lasting change. The best social value is always thought through, is very locally relevant, is embedded into real delivery, and is based on real needs. It’s not something separate, not something extra, just part of how things get done. If you wanted a magic formula for successful social value delivery, think of these five important aspects: locally relevant, clear and defined, based on needs, creating real measurable impact, and structured and reported. Okay, so let’s talk about something quite important, and I hope something that’s going to help you construct and structure your bids in a better way: the common pitfalls and why most social value bids lose marks. This is from an evaluator’s perspective, having scored and assessed hundreds of tenders in the past seven years. I know this is a slide where people usually start nodding because most of these are familiar. The biggest issue I see again and again is very vague statements. Things like, “We are committed to supporting local communities.” That’s great, but how, when, for whom, and what will that commitment and delivery change? If we can’t answer those questions, it’s very hard for someone to score it. Please do remember one thing: an evaluator can only score what they see. So unless you put it in there right in front of them, you will not get the score. Your track record and how greatly you delivered on previous contracts might make you one of the leading providers out there, but if it’s not written down and in front of the evaluator, it will not be scored. Buyers aren’t looking for the biggest numbers, because over-promising is another issue, and that’s what often loses credibility. What we are looking for is confidence that you can actually deliver what you promise. Often, the strongest bids are not the most ambitious; they are the most believable. Now, this is also something that has come through many, many times, and it’s been a point of many discussions I have been involved with. I always like to pause here because this is where the conversation often shifts. There is a very common perception that social value favors big organizations. If you are an SME and you try to compete with a massive corporation, and the buyer is using a tool or a platform such as TOMs or HACT with monetized values, let’s face it: you are not in a very favorable position. But what you need to remember is a very important thing: social value in those kinds of platforms comes in two parts. The quantitative part, which is the metrics and interventions you’re going to deliver, and the qualitative part, which is how you are going to deliver. Those two parts are both being scored. In a lot of public sector organizations, local authorities, and the NHS, the shift is not always 50/50. Sometimes more emphasis is put on the qualitative part than the quantitative part, and this is where you can really flourish. Also, as an SME, you’ve got a massive advantage because social value is fundamentally about understanding the place. SMEs tend to have local relationships, local insights, and direct delivery experience, and they are very deeply rooted in local communities. They understand their issues, their priorities, and their challenges. So instead of trying to compete on volume, what works is really being focused, clear, and relevant. Small commitments that genuinely respond to local needs will almost always outperform something bigger but more generic. This is less about scale and much more about connection and credibility. Now, let’s switch gears here. You’ve heard our perspective on how we perceive social value and what’s important for us, but let’s now hear from a supplier regarding the expectations around delivery and what’s important at that stage. So Caroline, delivering social value in practice, over to you. **Caroline Richardson:** Thank you. I would say that for many of you, you might actually be considering social value for the first time, and it’s a little bit of a frightening experience. It’s a frightening environment to work yourself into. But I’m just going to start by saying the best way to consider social value is really just to ignore the words and think to yourselves: what can we do to help or give back to our local community? That doesn’t mean promising multi-million-pound schemes, but actually looking at yourself as a business and thinking: what skills do we have that we could offer out into a local community? What could that look like? Vistry is a very large developer, but as a business, we’re filled with finance teams, HR teams, and individuals who are very good at writing business plans and creating financial plans. Very simple social value for us to do, which is very quick and very easy, is to think: can we actually offer those skills out into local communities? How could we support local communities just by pulling on the expertise that we’ve already got within us as a business? I would say try to stay within your sweet spot. Recognize what it is that you can actually do as a business, what your added value is, and don’t try to commit to too much. Don’t over-promise and then under-deliver. Be realistic with what you could actually propose. I think a lot of people want to win the bid so much that what they end up doing is committing to changing the whole world. Then, when the reality hits of them having to deliver it, it’s sudden panic stations because they may not have the skillset within the business to actually deliver it. They may not have thought through the financial implications of doing it or the reality of how they go about implementing it. So, I would say the key thing is to be realistic and stick to what your strengths are within your actual business. The next thing that I would really ask you to start to consider and think about is how you can track the impact that you’re having as a business. You’re starting out, you’re beginning to let your staff do volunteering days, they’re going off and having sessions with local community groups, and that’s great. From a very basic level, you could say our staff delivered 24 volunteering days last year, and that’s lovely—it’s a really nice, sweet story for people to hear. But as Joanna mentioned, you’re really missing a trick because you’re not able to truly evidence the impact that your business is having. You’re not able to have that narrative of: “We sent our finance team to a local charity that was struggling to do its bookkeeping, and the finance team went in, identified some VAT savings, and saved the charity £24,000 a year.” That is something where people can actually see the impact you’re having, rather than just the numbers of who’s involved and what’s going on. My final point on this slide is really that social value is something you don’t need a whole team of individuals delivering; you can embed it well within your organization. As long as you’re creating opportunities for social value to grow within your organization, you’re going to have enough individuals with passion and drive for their local areas and communities doing very simple social value that has massive amounts of impact. Moving on to my next slide. The next thing I’d say is that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. You don’t always have to create a new, innovative, exciting social value project. Sometimes, trying to do that is actually going to be more detrimental to your bid because you might be neglecting local communities or initiatives that could really benefit from your existing expertise. The organizations that you’re bidding to know those local communities and understand what help and support they need. You coming in and parachuting in with a project that you think is wonderful might be very quickly identified as not being what that local area really wants. What you’ve neglected to do is truly understand the local community you’re trying to engage with and provide services to. So, really take your time, understand the local community you’re trying to work with, and then look at who you could work alongside and what expertise you’ve got internally that can benefit them. I’ll also say you don’t always have to do social value by yourself. Being a developer, there’s a conscious need to not have too much interaction with other developers because of the sharing of information and the contractual implications it could have. But social value is one of those unique opportunities where you can actually partner with other organizations and businesses to increase the volume of impact you can have in a particular area. Think about that and think about who you could bring in, because it’s really important that you’re not creating duplication. You want to be delivering extra, not duplicating other projects and initiatives that are already out there. Okay, next slide. People often think that social value is a very nice, soft project—that it’s the fun thing to do—and they don’t always think about the consequences of not delivering it. What I would say to you is that for us as a business, if we don’t deliver social value in London, the financial consequences are huge. Not a little huge; we’re talking well over six figures, well over seven figures, in all fairness. People really need to understand when they’re bidding for work what the implications of non-delivery are to them as an organization. You also need to think about reputational damage. Invariably, a lot of the time when you’re placing a bid, the organization you’re bidding to is one you’re going to continue to bid to over multiple years. What you want to be able to do is go back with a reputation that’s strong so that you’re already being viewed in a favorable light. You want a track record of delivery so that the organization feels comfortable and confident that what you’re writing in your bid will actually be delivered. Non-delivery of social value can be incredibly harmful to your reputation. I would also say from my own social value perspective that there are so many things we could do as organizations to support local communities that don’t cost a lot of money but have real, meaningful impact, and we just don’t do them. We miss those opportunities, and those communities really end up missing out, which I think is a massive shame. If I just link that back to staff retention and turnover, you’ll often find that organizations that offer volunteering days and enable staff to feel like they’re making a difference have better staff retention rates. Social value can actually help your organization maintain stronger retention. We’ve already touched on data and reporting and making sure that you’re doing that, but another key thing I’d highlight at this point is that if you’re not recording the work you’re doing, it can lead to under-reporting. If you’re not able to evidence all of the impact that you’re having, you can’t tell your story as strongly as somebody else who is reporting effectively. Finally, we’ve talked about reputational damage, but as an impact of that, you’re obviously going to end up with potential relationship breakdowns between you and the organizations you’re bidding to. Next slide, please. On this slide, I just wanted to highlight a couple of case studies and talk about the fact that although when we started our relationship with Waltham Forest Council, we’d signed up to deliver a certain amount of social value and it was quite prescriptive, these three case studies are all things that have come outside of that contractual obligation. I think that’s due to the fact that the nature of our relationship with Waltham Forest has really grown over time. We’ve really enjoyed the work that we’ve done alongside Waltham Forest’s social value team, we’ve been able to see the impact that work has been having, and it’s made us want to go over and above in terms of that delivery. The first case study that I’d like to talk to you about is our “Door to Store” initiative. It’s not actually our initiative—it’s something that we’ve funded—but it’s a local community organization that operates in Waltham Forest. Essentially, it’s a community bus that picks vulnerable and disabled individuals up and takes them off to do their weekly shopping. You might think to yourself, “Well, that’s a very nice thing to do,” but because we’re able to record the data and understand the impact, what I can tell you is that it’s not really just about getting people on a bus to do their weekly shop. It’s about taking individuals who are isolated, suffering from loneliness, and probably have poor mental health, and giving them dignity and independence by helping to fund this service and ensure that it continues. It’s about enabling people to build further community cohesion in the area they’re living in and get to know other people. It’s also giving them access to fresh, healthy food. The benefits of being involved in that project are absolutely massive, but on the surface, it looks like you’re just paying for a taxi service. You need to really understand what that service is actually delivering. The next thing is the South Chingford Library refurbishment that we’re currently involved with. It was an old launderette, and we were approached by Waltham Forest Council saying, “We’ve got this amazing idea of turning this into a community library where local people can access library services on their doorstep. They’ll also have job clubs, mother and baby groups operating out of there, and it’s going to create a lot of community cohesion. Is this something you could get involved with?” Yes, it was a no-brainer for us because we’ve got a whole host of subcontractors who work with us. Because we’re so committed to social value and it’s so embedded within us as an organization, that is all broken down into our subcontractors’ commitments. As soon as we get projects or initiatives like this, they are more than willing to come on board and support us in that delivery. The final thing I just want to touch on is the Young Black Male program that we’re supporting in Waltham Forest. That’s being spearheaded by Barclays, and essentially it’s looking at a priority group of individuals identified by Waltham Forest—young black men—and looking at what their barriers to employment might be. This isn’t just for day-to-day jobs, but more aspirational jobs and opportunities. For example, Waltham Forest is very close to Canary Wharf, but a lot of young people won’t necessarily see that as a career opportunity for them. So, it’s about doing this really innovative project, co-designing with young people what they might need in order to be able to access those more aspirational jobs, and we’re really excited to be part of that project and see what the outcomes might be as we move through it. I think that is me done, and I will hand back to Joanna. **Joanna Dalgreen:** That was fabulous. I’ve actually seen a few questions coming through, and I think this is where the fun part starts. This is something I’ve heard quite a bit. The question is: how is social value relevant to certain industries, specifically law firms? If a law firm is bidding for a project or legal piece of work, how can it contribute to social value in the bidding response? Have you any thoughts on this piece? I can probably take that. I think social value is really relevant to law firms, not just as a nice-to-have, but as a strategic commercial priority. As we touched on today, public sector buyers and many corporates now assess social value as part of tender scoring, especially in the UK. Law firms bidding for local authority panels, government legal frameworks, or large corporate clients must demonstrate a clear social impact commitment. What kind of intervention might you think of if you are a law firm? Maybe delivering community legal education, providing pro bono support to underrepresented and underserved groups, or creating local employment and apprenticeships. Social value can directly affect whether a firm wins work or not. There is a misconception out there that social value is only relevant to some markets or industries, but it’s not—anyone in any market, sector, or industry can deliver meaningful public benefit. I hope that helps. **Ann Cronin:** Fantastic. Joanna, do you feel that people are taking advantage of these types of early engagement discussions? Do you think there are questions people should be asking? Is there something you wish you were asked more in these early engagement stages? **Joanna Dalgreen:** I wish that we had more attendance during soft market engagement. Prior to every tender being published, part of that process is soft market engagement. We don’t often see the kind of attendance we would like to see, and this is an amazing opportunity for organizations that are interested in bidding locally and working with a specific local authority, trust, or public sector organization to come and ask questions. That’s where a lot of really meaningful and helpful conversations happen. We also deliver engagement workshops in Waltham Forest that are 100% focused on social value during the tender stage. Again, I would like to see more organizations attending these because those that do have managed to produce really relevant and high-scoring proposals. **Ann Cronin:** Speaking of the proposal piece, one thing I do hear about quite a bit is that sometimes there can be rigid word count constraints, which can make it quite difficult to get enough credibility or evidence in there. Have you seen a strong framework that works well in responses, allowing people to provide the narrative plus the evidence and credibility together? Not to put you on the spot, Joanna, but… **Joanna Dalgreen:** That’s okay. What I will say—and let’s flip your question a little bit—is that we know we are living in the era of AI, right? We do not use AI in Waltham Forest to score proposals or bids because AI can be wrong, and we focus on credibility and quality over anything else. While every AI platform will deliver a very fast result, here is a bit of advice: if you are using AI to write a response to a question or a social value framework, please read through that response. You would be surprised at how often AI generates something that is completely wrong or irrelevant, and it will be noticed and you will lose scores based on this. We all opt for great AI platforms, and they do help to produce narrative, especially when there is a very rigid word count. But a human eye is a human eye, and it’s really important to check the response before you hit that submit button to make sure it actually makes sense. **Ann Cronin:** Fantastic, and that is very fair. I think AI can be a fabulous tool to help you rephrase things and help you craft it, but you can’t rely on it to actually come up with the answer itself; you lean on it to iterate on the response you’re giving. Just looking through some questions here… Caroline, for you: what does the handover from a big bid team to delivery look like? How do you keep track of commitments and make sure they’re not getting lost? Have you seen a process working well there, or how is that managed within your group or other organizations? **Caroline Richardson:** The key for us is that our social value team is involved at the bid stage. Any social value submission that goes out has actually been written in partnership with the social value team, so we’re aware of what we’re signing ourselves up for and the commitments from the very beginning. Then, we work really closely with all of the different teams throughout the process of that becoming a reality for delivery. We work closely with our development team around the negotiation side once we’ve won a bid to turn those commitments into reality. It’s that close working relationship with those other teams—the embedding of the social value team within those different teams at different stages—that means we’re always aware of what we’re signing up to. We also have our own tracking system. It’s not fancy, but it’s basically a very detailed spreadsheet that sets out the different projects and initiatives. However, it also depends on the organization that you’re working with because some organizations will want you to utilize their platforms for monitoring and tracking. For example, with Waltham Forest, we utilize the Social Value Portal, and that’s actually a great tool because all of your commitments are on there. You can upload your evidence and your delivery against it, and you can check your progress to see if you’re falling behind, if you need to do more, and what your priority areas are. That enables you to have really good, strong conversations with your partner organization around delivery. Joanna, it has led to us having good conversations, hasn’t it? By the time you bid for a project and it goes into the reality of delivery, time has passed, and needs and priorities change. Being able to track it effectively leads to good conversations around whether we can do a different type of social value delivery and what those opportunities look like. **Ann Cronin:** Yeah, I think Joanna mentioned before that even having that attitude of “we will work with you” can go a long way when it comes to how the response is crafted. This is an interesting one for both of you, so it’ll be interesting to hear how you both interpret this: how do I interpret the weighting? If social value is 10%, how does that change how much detail and ambition I bring versus if it’s weighted at 20% or 30% of the score? How do you balance that? Caroline, I’ll ask you first. How do you balance that when you’re looking at all the different projects that you wish to win, and balancing what it will take to win the bid? **Caroline Richardson:** I would say that although social value might look like 10% of bids at the moment, it’s a growing item, and there’s talk that it could potentially end up being 30% of bids in the future. The argument that I always have is that although it might be seen as a 10% line item right now, because it is growing in importance, we actually need it to be one of the strongest parts within the bid framework and document. It’s often the social value element that wins us the bids because it’s a differentiator. When you look at the commercial cost, the pricing can be quite similar between different organizations, but it’s the evidence of being able to show that you understand the local area you’re about to operate in and the added value you can bring that sets the tone of the relationship at the very beginning. Even though it might be 10%, I’d say it’s still one of the most important sections and must be considered properly. **Ann Cronin:** Joanna, have you thoughts to add there? **Joanna Dalgreen:** Yes. I think let’s just start with what weighting actually means, because it is important to understand that the weighting determines how much influence social value has on the overall evaluation score compared to price and quality. If you think of a tender that has price at 40%, quality at 50%, and social value at 10%, the social value contributes 10% of the total score suppliers can achieve. But social value is not a price, and that percentage determines the influence on who wins. Obviously, 30% is huge. Some public sector buyers, like Greater Manchester for instance, use a 30% weighting. They are a very mature buyer and had social value implemented even before the Social Value Act in 2012. What I will say is whether it’s 10%, 20%, or 30%, it matters. In Waltham Forest, our standard minimum social value weighting is 10%. I have seen many times where social value became the deciding factor on who wins and who doesn’t in terms of being awarded the contract. Don’t think that if you only see 10% it doesn’t matter, because that 10% may be the defining factor. It’s as simple as that. **Ann Cronin:** What’s one of the most common over-promises you see? When it comes to credibility during the evaluation, are there common themes or trends you see when it comes to over-promising, Joanna? **Joanna Dalgreen:** I think there are two parts to this. First of all, we use national TOMs in Waltham Forest, and as a procurement tool, they are absolutely amazing. We have bespoke work with localized proxy values and localized monetized values, which means that the value of someone being employed as a result of a contract—someone who has been unemployed for a long time—will be different to Camden, Westminster, or Suffolk. What we see quite often is bidders jumping on the metrics that attract the biggest proxy monetized value without actually thinking: “Will I be able to deliver these outcomes? Is it actually feasible for my organization to create 120 jobs within a 12-month contract?” What I can tell you is that it’s not. This is a common mistake and a trend I see over and over. Evaluators often discount these measures to zero because we have that authority. As a bit of advice, if you are going to put a commitment against employment-related measures, make sure you are able to deliver, because you will be expected to do so and you will be managed on your performance. Secondly, if you put a number that is completely impossible and unrealistic, we are going to challenge you on it, and it’s absolutely unnecessary. The other thing I have seen over and over again in the past few years is over-promising and putting absolutely exaggerated numbers on environmental measures, especially when calculating scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. If you are bidding for a contract that is worth, say, £20 million over four years, and you promise social value worth £35 million, that is not going to happen. If the contracting authority doesn’t have a dedicated social value team, I want to reassure you they have a procurement team, and there will be somebody scoring those bids. If you put really exaggerated values that look impossible, even to someone who has never scored a bid before, it raises red flags because the value of your social value submission cannot be higher than the value of the contract itself. This is another common mistake I have seen. A good submission typically lingers between 10% and 20% of the contract value. All parts of the submission are scrutinized and carefully assessed. My advice is to be realistic, especially about your own company. A law firm will have a slightly different strategy and approach to social value than a construction organization, and this is fine because the buyer would never expect a law firm to come and deliver a refurbishment project for a library. They expect something relevant to their industry. Being realistic is really key here. **Ann Cronin:** To both of you, speaking about being realistic, how specific should numbers be? Is it better to say “20 apprentices” rather than saying “a meaningful apprenticeship program”? At what point does being specific become a delivery risk and potentially impact credibility or how valuable the program looks? I’ll throw that to both of you because it’d be interesting to see your perspectives. **Joanna Dalgreen:** I’ll pick this up first and then I’ll let Caroline answer. Because we are using TOMs, you have to be specific. My advice is that if the buyer is using a platform that has monetized social value commitments where you have to commit to specific numbers, then do put real numbers in. If the buyer is using qualitative questions only where that narrative is key, still commit to real numbers. Why? Because it’s very hard to score a “meaningful number of apprentices” compared to 20, 15, or 10. Another bit of advice: for me, a bidder that commits to creating five high-degree apprenticeships will win over someone who promises 50 level-two apprenticeships in business and admin. Again, quality does not equal quantity here. Caroline? **Caroline Richardson:** Yeah, I’d agree with that. I think also from a business perspective, it touches on that reputational risk we mentioned earlier. If you’re going to be ambiguous in what you put into a bid at the very beginning, it can lead to misconstrued relationships moving forward because your belief of what you’ve written can be very different from someone else’s interpretation of it, and you’re already starting off on the wrong foot. It’s key that as a business you’re clear about what you’re going to deliver to properly manage that relationship. You need to be realistic about things, but it’s also very important to have those figures at the beginning because you’re going to have to build the business case for the delivery of this as you move forward. If you don’t know how many people you’re going to have or what the cost is going to be, you’re going to be fighting your internal business to get it delivered. Invariably, they’ll push back and go, “Oh, it’s not important, do we really have to have those apprentices? We haven’t got the money to pay for it, we didn’t build it into the budget.” It just gets crazy. So yeah, I would always say you need to have those figures at the very beginning. **Ann Cronin:** If someone is new to a sector or an area, how would they handle the credibility gap if they don’t have past performance to back it up? What’s your advice on that piece? **Caroline Richardson:** I would always go and have conversations with local organizations. When it comes to things like apprenticeships, I go and have conversations with local colleges. I go and speak to people who have that knowledge. You need to be realistic in the bid with how you’re phrasing things and what you’re putting into it, but there are people out there who are willing to help you and give you that baseline. I would always say don’t over-promise. Don’t put big figures in; be realistic. You can put in your bid document: “This will be our first ever apprenticeship program; we are striving to achieve five apprentices over the lifetime of this project.” You’re being honest and putting it out on the table, but you haven’t unrealistically said you’re going to have 350. **Ann Cronin:** I suppose it’s back to what Joanna said—it’s back to quality and not necessarily quantity, looking at what’s going to have the biggest impact. I think that applies to smaller or medium-sized organizations that maybe don’t have the huge budgets or resources; it’s not always about the loudest project you can do, it’s about what’s going to have the deepest impact. We might do one last question here. There was one I saw for you, Joanna: what are the phrases or clichés that you are sick of seeing in responses? If you could stop people from writing something or using certain terms, is there anything that comes to mind? **Joanna Dalgreen:** There aren’t specific forbidden words, if you like, but there is something I have noticed over the past couple of years. In a lot of submissions or proposals, the word “impact” is used frequently but not always in the right context. There’s a clear distinction between “value” and “impact,” and those two words are often used interchangeably but incorrectly. Value and impact represent two different stages of the project lifecycle. Think of value as the commitment—it’s your promise, it’s what you are going to deliver. The impact is the result of that delivery; it’s the change that happens. If you are using those two words in your proposal, just make sure you understand what they mean. The other thing we see over and over again is commitments without a clear delivery or implementation plan. If you are going to promise that during the lifetime of the contract you will work with underrepresented local communities—say, for instance, young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET)—and support them through employment pathways, please tell me how. How are you going to do it? Who are you going to partner with? How many people are you going to work with? Ultimately, what will the outcome be at the end? As a result of your intervention, how will the lives of these people change? Because that is what matters, and that is what social value is all about. **Ann Cronin:** Well, I think on that note, that is the perfect way to finish out the session. Joanna, Caroline, thank you so much, there was so much great information there. Thank you to everyone who has joined and asked questions. As I said, we will be sharing the recording. Both Joanna and Caroline are on LinkedIn and are open to connecting if you want to ask any questions or carry on the conversation. With that, Joanna, Caroline, thank you so much for joining us. **Caroline Richardson:** Thank you for having us. **Joanna Dalgreen:** Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. **Ann Cronin:** Thank you very much. Bye.