Successful Public Sector Tenders and Grants
Many SMEs tell us they don’t have much Social Value to talk about.
Then we start asking questions.
Do you employ people locally?
Do you use local suppliers?
Do you take on apprentices or provide work experience?
Do you invest in staff training?
Does your team volunteer?
Do you support charities or community organisations?
Are you reducing waste, energy use or carbon emissions?
Are you taking action to improve equality, diversity and inclusion?
Very quickly, the answer changes.
The problem usually isn’t that the business isn’t creating Social Value.
The problem is that nobody is consistently recording it.
For businesses competing for public-sector work, that’s a missed commercial opportunity.
Social Value shouldn’t be something you think about when a tender question appears. It should be part of the evidence your business collects throughout the year.
You May Already Be Delivering More Social Value Than You Think
SMEs often create Social Value as a natural consequence of running their businesses.
A facilities-management company might employ people from the communities where its contracts are delivered.
An IT company might provide work experience to local students.
A construction business might use local subcontractors.
A professional-services business might give employees paid volunteering days.
The activities are happening.
But when a tender asks:
“What Social Value have you previously delivered?”
the answer becomes surprisingly difficult.
Someone remembers that employees volunteered last year.
Finance knows approximately how much is spent with local suppliers.
HR has the training records.
Operations knows about the apprentice.
Someone else has the charity photographs.
Nobody has brought it together.
That’s the gap.
What Social Value Evidence Should You Track?
You don’t need to measure everything.
Start with activity that genuinely reflects what your business does and where you can collect reliable evidence.
Local Spend
If supporting local economies is part of your approach, track it.
That might include:
- Spend with local suppliers
- Spend with SMEs
- Use of local subcontractors
- Number of local suppliers
- Percentage of relevant supply-chain spend retained locally
Instead of saying:
“We support local businesses.”
you can eventually say:
“During the year, £X of our supply-chain expenditure was spent with SMEs and £X was spent within the local area.”
One is a statement.
The other is evidence.
Jobs and Employment
Record the employment impact your business creates.
This could include:
- New jobs created
- Local people employed
- Apprenticeships
- Work placements
- Graduate opportunities
- Previously unemployed people recruited
- Roles created through contract growth
Again, actual numbers make the story stronger.
Training and Skills
Businesses invest considerable amounts of time and money developing people but often don’t think of that information as Social Value evidence.
Track things such as:
- Training hours
- Qualifications achieved
- Apprentices supported
- Professional development
- Work-experience placements
- Mentoring
- Skills programmes
Don’t just record that training took place.
Where possible, capture the outcome.
Did someone gain a qualification?
Progress into a new role?
Complete an apprenticeship?
Develop a new skill?
Volunteering and Community Activity
Community contribution is another area where evidence can easily disappear.
Consider recording:
- Employee volunteering hours
- Charities supported
- Community projects
- Fundraising
- Donations
- School engagement
- Mentoring
- Community partnerships
Photographs, testimonials and short case studies can complement the numbers and demonstrate what actually happened.
Carbon and Environmental Activity
Environmental improvements can also contribute valuable evidence.
Depending on your business, you might monitor:
- Carbon emissions
- Energy use
- Fleet changes
- Waste reduction
- Recycling
- Single-use plastic reduction
- Sustainable procurement
- Travel reductions
- Environmental initiatives
This can also strengthen the evidence behind your wider environmental commitments and Carbon Reduction Plan.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Look at the activities and outcomes your business can genuinely evidence.
That might include:
- Workforce diversity
- Inclusive recruitment
- Accessibility improvements
- EDI training
- Employee networks
- Targeted employment initiatives
- Support for underrepresented groups
The important principle across all these areas is:
Don’t make the evidence fit the tender. Record what the business is actually doing.
Your Social Value Evidence Should Belong to Your Business
Some councils and other public-sector organisations have their own systems and processes for monitoring Social Value commitments on their contracts.
That’s useful.
But why should the only record of your Social Value performance sit within individual client reporting processes?
Imagine having five public-sector contracts.
One buyer tracks volunteering.
Another asks about employment.
Another monitors environmental measures.
Another has its own reporting system.
Another asks for quarterly spreadsheets.
You’re delivering Social Value across the business, but your evidence is fragmented across individual contracts and customers.
There’s a better approach.
Create your own Social Value record at business level.
Then you can understand the combined impact your organisation is creating across all its activities and contracts.
You can still provide individual councils and contracting authorities with the information they require.
But you’re no longer relying on each buyer to build the evidence story for you.
You own the data.
Social Value Tracking Doesn’t Need Expensive Software
There’s a growing market for Social Value measurement platforms.
For some organisations, sophisticated software will make sense.
For many SMEs, particularly those starting to measure their impact, it doesn’t need to be that complicated.
You need:
A clear method.
Defined measures.
Evidence.
Ownership.
And the discipline to update it regularly.
A structured tracker can record the activity, date, contract or business area, measure, outcome and supporting evidence.
Then establish a routine for maintaining it.
For example, relevant information could be reviewed monthly or quarterly rather than reconstructed once a year.
The technology isn’t necessarily the difficult part.
Consistency is.
Better Evidence Creates Better Tender Answers
Once you’ve built a reliable Social Value evidence bank, tender writing becomes easier.
Instead of making broad claims about what you intend to do, you can demonstrate what you’ve already achieved.
For example:
Weak:
“We are committed to supporting local employment and developing skills.”
Stronger:
“During the last 12 months, we created X local roles, delivered X hours of employee training and supported X work placements.”
The second response gives the evaluator something tangible.
Your previous performance can also make future commitments more credible.
If you can show that you’ve delivered similar initiatives elsewhere, a buyer has greater reason to believe you can deliver them again.
The Evidence Matters After You Win Too
Social Value isn’t only a tender-scoring exercise.
Once you win the contract, the commitments made in your submission need to be delivered.
That’s why Social Value promises should have a plan behind them.
For each significant commitment, establish:
- What will be delivered
- Who owns it
- When it will happen
- How it will be measured
- What evidence will be collected
- How progress will be reported
This creates a clear link between bid commitment, operational delivery and contract reporting.
It also makes contract-management conversations stronger.
Instead of saying:
“We’ve been doing lots in the community.”
you can demonstrate exactly what has happened.
Don’t Promise What You Can’t Measure
There’s a temptation during competitive tenders to make ambitious Social Value commitments because they sound impressive.
Be careful.
A commitment made in a tender can become a delivery expectation once the contract is awarded.
Before making the promise, ask:
Can we actually deliver this?
Who will own it?
What will it cost?
How will we measure it?
What evidence will prove it happened?
Social Value commitments should strengthen the commercial proposition, not create an unmanaged liability for the delivery team.
Start With a Social Value Audit and Tracker
This is the thinking behind the Tender Response Social Value Audit and Tracker.
We help SMEs understand what Social Value they’re already creating, identify gaps in their evidence and establish a practical way of recording future activity.
The approach can cover areas such as:
- Local employment
- Local and SME spend
- Training and skills
- Apprenticeships and work placements
- Volunteering
- Community activity
- Carbon and environmental improvements
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
- Supporting evidence
- Ownership and measurement
The objective isn’t to introduce another expensive software platform.
It’s to give your business a methodical, manageable system for understanding and evidencing its impact.
Own Your Social Value Story
Don’t wait for the next tender to ask what you’ve achieved.
And don’t rely solely on individual councils or customers to monitor the Social Value you’re creating through their contracts.
Build your own evidence.
Measure it consistently.
Use it in tenders.
Use it in contract reviews.
Use it in customer conversations.
And use it to understand the wider impact your business is actually making.
Because Social Value isn’t simply an additional paragraph at the end of a tender response.
Done properly, it’s commercial evidence of the value your business creates beyond delivering the core contract.
The Tender Response Social Value Audit and Tracker can help you identify what you’re already delivering and put a practical measurement system in place.
Get in touch with Tender Response to find out more.
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