Resource: Other open valuation practices 

Capturing meaningful data and accurately measuring the impact on people’s lives is challenging—particularly in social and environmental valuation. Unfortunately, many standards, resources, and metric sets in this field remain proprietary, often hiding valuable public data, research, and tools behind expensive paywalls. However, transparency is crucial for accountability and verification—it’s also Social Value Principle #6. 

To break open the “black box” of valuation practices—particularly in this emerging field—we must embrace collaboration and knowledge-sharing to give us the best chance to improve collectively. The issues we face are immense, and only by working together can we enhance practices more effectively and efficiently. 

Fortunately, there is growing momentum behind opening up the social and environmental valuation space. As a group of social value practitioners, including, Impact Reporting, State of Life and PRD, we built MeasureUp. This initiative offers freely available resources and ensures transparency regarding how values are sourced, generated, and applied. But we’re not the only players in the game – which is a good thing!

In this blog, we’ll explore the growing momentum behind open social and environmental valuation, highlighting other open impact valuation initiatives and resources that promote openness and are worth referencing.  

Exploring key open valuation initiatives 

What	Who	Kind of value/s	Where	Kind of information	Notes
The impact accounting methodology	International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI)  and the Value Balancing Alliance (VBA)	Social and environmental	Global	General methodology Topic papers on Environmental, Social  Value factors – monetised and other	They have launched a public comment period to gather feedback on the following exposure drafts: It’s still open for consultation until Dec 7.
Open Social Value Bank Denmark	Open platform	Wellbeing	Denmark	Monetized and non-monetized well-being values	Opportunities to learn about the bank and the methodology are available through the OSVB Events page
Database of Happiness Coefficients (DoHC)	C. P. Barrington-Leigh and Katja Lemermeyer	Wellbeing	Canada	Happiness coefficients	Based on academic research and published in Journal of Happiness Studies
Greater Manchester Unit cost database	Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Research Team	Themes are crime, education and skills, employment and economy, environment, fire, housing, health, social services.	United Kingdom	Costs are broken down into fiscal, economic and social value	The current updated version of the Unit Cost Database was published in October 2022 with next version aimed to be coming out in late 2024
Value factors	GIST Impact & WifOR Institute	Natural, human, social	25 countries	Monetary terms	The Value Factor publication was sponsored by Capitals Coalition, IFVI, and the Value Balancing Alliance
Impact Valuation Hub	Astanor, Summa Equity and Wire Group	Social, environmental, and economic	United Kingdom	Resources, frameworks, and methodologies	Launched on 21st November 2024
Global Value Exchange (GVE)	Social Value Manager and Envoy Partnership	Social	United Kingdom	Outcomes, indicators, and financial valuations	The data from Social Value UK (SVUK)’s Quality Assured Reports
US Social Value Bank	Ohio University	Wellbeing	United States	US WELLBY values	Nothing public yet
MeasureUp	Impact Reporting, State of Life and PRD	Wellbeing	United Kingdom	Valuation framework	Publicly available for free

The impact accounting methodology 

• Developed by the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI) and the Value Balancing Alliance (VBA), this globally applicable methodology enables corporations and investors to translate social and environmental impacts into monetary terms.  

• IFVI is an independent nonprofit founded in 2022, emerging from the Impact-Weighted Accounts Project at Harvard Business School.  

• They have published methodologies for General Methodology 1: Conceptual Framework for Impact Accounting as well as topics on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Adequate Wages 

•  Currently, they have a public comment period, open until December 7 2024, to gather feedback on the following exposure drafts: 
  • General Methodology 2: Impact Measurement & Valuation
  • Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) Topic Methodology 
  • Water Consumption Topic Methodology 

• As well there are interim methodologies published on Air Pollution, Land Use and Conversion, Waste, and Water Pollution, as well as a downloadable Global Value Database covering all environmental value factors. 

Open Social Value Bank (Denmark) 

• The Open Social Value Bank (OSVB) is a catalogue of social values. The values can be used to calculate the economic value of well-being, expressed as changes in a person’s life satisfaction resulting from a social change.  

• The platform continuously evolves, with the value bank containing both monetised and non-monetised well-being values that can be used in e.g. social cost-benefit analyses, where both budgetary and social values are included.  

• Developed using Danish data, the methodology employs the “subjective wellbeing valuation” method, where the effect of social initiatives and interventions can be expressed in WELLBYs (1 life satisfaction point for 1 person per year), and aligns with the UK Greenbook published methodology.   

Database of Happiness Coefficients (DoHC) (Canada) 

• The Database of Happiness has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies in 2023 (Barrington-Leigh and Lemermeyer, 2023).  It has the potential to be a social value bank for Canada. 

• The project advocates for an evidence-informed metric for wellbeing in Canada, with collaboration between academia, civil society, relevant stakeholders, and government agencies playing a crucial role in constructing and curating this social value bank.  

• They present a nascent database of happiness coefficients which in current format could be a useful resource for those with economist capabilities to use. 

 Greater Manchester Unit cost database  

• One of the longest-running examples of transparent valuation, the GM unit cost database brings together some 900 cost estimates into a single place. It has been available and incrementally updated since 2011and the entries cover the following thematic areas: 
  • crime
  • education and skills 
  • employment and economy 
  • environment 
  • fire 
  • housing 
  • health 
  • social services  

• Most of the database entries are drawn from national sources, including government reports and academic research, all of which have been quality assured by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Research Team with oversight from relevant central government departments.  

• The current updated version of the Unit Cost Database was published in October 2022 with the next version posited to be published in late 2024.  There is also a CBA excel tool that can be used in conjunction with the database. 

GIST Impact & WifOR Institute Value Factors 

• GIST Impact has granted public access to their proprietary value factors together with WifOR Institute. They provide a framework template and methodology summary and collection of coefficients (so-called value factors) for 25 countries.  

• Simplified methodology guidance is also provided to enable company executives and portfolio managers to use these factors to calculate their impacts on natural, human, social and produced capital. 

Impact Valuation Hub 

• Launched on 21 November 2024, the hub aims to integrate impact valuation into fund management practices. 

• It shares practical ways to value impact, build and share impact pathways and data sets and foster collaboration among investors.  

Global Value Exchange (UK) 

• Sponsored by Social Value Manager, who administers this partnership with Institute of Social Value, this online platform collects outcomes, indicators, and financial valuations. 

• GVE is an online database that supports the social value community through the collection and sharing of outcomes, indicators, and financial valuations. It includes data from Social Value UK (SVUK)’s Quality Assured Reports.   

US Social Value Bank (USA)

• Developed by Ohio University in conjunction with guidance from UK social value consultants from Social Value International and Simetrica-Jacobs, this is intended to be a US-equivalent to the HACT UK Social Value Bank (Fujiwara, 2013, 2014; Fujiwara et al., 2017), with a focus on practitioner use for social return-on-investment analyses. 

• The values are derived using the WELLBY approach recommended by the HM Treasury (i.e. pivoting off the value of a QALY, in line with the lower-bound derivation of the monetary value of 1.0 WELLBYs described above) (HM Treasury, 2021)—again, the method originally proposed by Frijters and Krekel (2021). 

•  Most empirical studies and policy recommendations estimate QALY thresholds in the US to be between $100,000 – $150,000 (Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, 2023; Neumann et al., 2014; Padula et al., 2021). This is used as the basis for a US WELLBY. 

Summary

At MeasureUp, we’re proud to be part of this movement of open and transparent social value practice, alongside other pioneering initiatives like the GM Unit Cost Database, Global Value Exchange, Impact Valuation Hub, and the Open Social Value Bank.  Hopefully, we will see these resources grow and develop. In the meantime, we encourage you to explore these resources.