5 top tips for using major events to drive inclusive growth
Shah Begum, Head of Outreach & Social Value at United By 2022, on delivering social value through the Birmingham Commonwealth Games
Shah Begum
Head of Outreach & Social Value at United By 2022
Shah Begum
Head of Outreach & Social Value at United By 2022
The 2022 Commonwealth Games was hosted by Birmingham, with venues and events across the West Midlands. The West Midlands Combined Authority is a member of the Inclusive Growth Network.
Our Charity, United By 2022, was created to continue the legacy of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, championing the West Midlands, its people and places.
We’ve been on quite a journey since Ozzy yelled ‘Birmingham forever!’ at the closing ceremony on 8th August 2022 and wanted to share with you, our top tips for using a major event to catalyse inclusive growth and how to cascade those benefits so that they are felt across the region.
Our 5 top tips
- Start early – you’ll have heard the age-old adage ‘start with the end in mind’ and that could not be more true! It’s vitally important to embed someone, of suitable seniority and influence, whose job it is to bring in a community and legacy voice. That person will also need to bring on board procurement, legal, marketing and the senior leadership team and ideally would have a small budget to start with, in order to get some things off the ground.
- Map and menu – talk to your communities upfront and understand their local needs. We called ours a Charter, it had five things on it and explained local priorities, e.g. local employment, sustainability (for a carbon neutral games), etc. This document was a great starting point for suppliers tendering for work. Many of the niche suppliers we used weren’t local and they didn’t have a lot of experience with creating social value. By using our Charter, we could match them to local community organisations pre-tender, helping their bid, kickstarting those connections and driving social value early on.
- Create a community network – get to know your community groups, the grassroots organisations, their challenges and gaps, their priorities and needs. Once you know them and have begun to build a relationship, you can better connect them with the businesses that will support them most – vouching for them, facilitating those relationships and getting those value exchanges flowing quickly.
- Measure it – I can’t stress this one enough! Often so much great work and value is being created, but if it’s not measured you can’t report it! That’s why it’s important to put the right tools and processes in place from the get go. Measurement should be the responsibility of the supplier relationship managers and embedded within the contract management framework. Procurement teams will need to be fully engaged as will legal, and you will need to establish early doors what the appetite is and how hard you want to push.
- Stories and statistics – once you have your numbers, don’t forget to capture the non-monetary impact. The social value that is being generated will have real people behind it, with real lives, that are being transformed. These stories are where the real magic lies. By telling these stories you galvanise organisations from across the public and private sector to further engage with the local communities in which they live and work.
Refining our approach
Through these learnings, we managed to create £300m in social value at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, and we’ve not stopped there - we are well on target to deliver over £1m of social value in just 18 months from our work at United By 2022!
But never one to rest on our laurels, we have continued to refine our approach and processes and have created a unique model for public and private sector organisations to engage with the West Midlands third sector. Our model delivers those stories and statistics, but most importantly, is a vehicle to drive inclusive growth. We call it ‘How to eat the elephant!’, as we break down the complexities of delivering and measuring social value into smaller, easily achievable chunks. So how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Our mission is to make the West Midlands a centre of excellence for social value, driving inclusive growth by connecting responsible businesses with local charities and community groups, and we’re just getting started!
Find more about our work here, or get in touch to chat about how we can help you with your social value journey.
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