Meet Sheila Durie – co-author of the 2009 SROI Guide

For Sheila Durie it all starts in the late 1990s through an informal meeting with a couple of European friends and colleagues. At the time, she has been working in setting up social firms as employment creation for person with disabilities when she is invited to discover a new methodology brought back from San Francisco, of which she is quickly convinced. Plans to discuss the formation of a European network are promptly set in motion, and Sheila reaches out to the Scottish government through her organisation Forth Sector to fund a pilot program with their social firm Six Mary’s Place. Throughout this pilot, which ends up including two more organisations, Sheila tests out REDF’s model for her calculations and realises it is unsuited to the UK. 

This construction therefore starts out in a profoundly European setting. As the experimentation continues and more pieces are brought together – the concept of “stakeholder engagement” from the New Economics Foundation,  a new approach to the calculations and a first attempt with a firm in Hungary – the group realises there is a distinctive UK approach to their work and create the SROI network in 2003. From this, the organisation works on the template and disseminates the methodology, eventually receiving funding by the UK Cabinet Office and Scottish government to write the official SROI guide and produce it for publication in 2009. Throughout this time, they of course experience resistance and objections particularly when it comes to the new practices they introduce, such as the monetisation of intangible outcomes.  

One consequence of the creation and funding of the SROI guide is that Sheila’s organisation Forth Sector is awarded a contract with the Scottish government in 2009 to develop and disseminate the SROI methodology for two and a half years. Despite this contract, and the Scottish government funding the production of the SROI guide (as well as the indicative financial proxy database and a number of dissemination work) and supporting the establishment of the Global Value Exchange, Scotland has actually taken a on different approach to social value than its neighbour. 

Indeed, while the Social Value Act is a key aspect of the English landscape of social value, effectively tying in requirements for social value in government contracts, the Scottish approach to procurement has limited for social value considerations. Their approach, driven by EU standards, includes a scoring which focuses on “best value” with targeted training and employment initiatives. This “best value” approach also means no specificity is accorded to social value apart from specific sectors like the construction sector.  

Looking back on it now after years of discussing the methodology, and despite her reservations to the Scottish government’s procurement policy, Sheila values all the progress that has been done since 2011. In her own words “It's a given now that you have to report on your social impact, whereas 15 years ago it wasn't”. Her involvement since the onset of the social value movement has continued: she was on Social Value UK’s board until 2015 and will join the new International Standards Committee.