Why Quantifying Social Value Actually Matters
Everyone in the social enterprise world talks about “making a difference.” But what does that actually look like? When someone who’s been through homelessness finishes our barista training and starts earning a wage, the value goes far beyond that payslip. There’s the confidence of learning something new. The routine. Less pressure on housing services, on mental health provision, on the benefits system. A sense of purpose. None of that shows up on a balance sheet, and that’s exactly the problem we’re trying to solve.
Why the method matters
Research into Social Return on Investment (SROI) shows that the way you measure impact changes what you end up seeing. Some approaches only count what saves the government money. Others go deeper and ask the people involved how their lives have actually changed. We think you need both. The hard numbers and the human story.
How we calculate it
We start with something simple: hours. Specifically, the total paid placement hours our programme participants work across our London cafés each month. In January 2025, that number was 108. That’s 108 hours of real work, paid at the London Living Wage, by people referred to us through partners like Centrepoint and St Giles Trust because they were at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
But those hours represent far more than wages. We think about the value in four layers:
Direct economic value. Every hour is paid at the London Living Wage. For many of our participants, it’s their first regular income in months, sometimes years. That money goes into their pocket, back into the local economy, and reduces their need for state support.
Public sector savings. Crisis estimates that one person sleeping rough costs the public purse around £20,128 a year across NHS services, mental health, criminal justice and emergency housing. Councils spent £2.8 billion on temporary accommodation in 2024/25 alone. Every placement hour we deliver moves someone further from that reality.
Wellbeing value. The UK Social Value Bank, developed by HACT and backed by HM Treasury’s Green Book, puts a monetary figure on wellbeing outcomes like moving from unemployment into work. We’re in the process of applying these proxies to our own data, so that each placement hour carries a transparent, evidence-based pound value.
The compounding effect. Those 108 hours don’t exist in isolation. They’re part of a structured journey: referral, taster day, three days of barista training, a three-week paid placement, then a connection into longer-term work through our partner
network. Each hour builds towards the thing that creates the most lasting value of all: a sustained job.
Where we are
We want to be honest about this. We track our hours, we pay the London Living Wage, and we know our completion rates and employment outcomes. What we’re building now is a formal methodology that ties all of that to established frameworks like the UK Social Value Bank and the National TOMs. The goal is to get to a point where we can say: 108 hours generated £X of social value, calculated using Y methodology, based on Z data. No hand-waving. Just the numbers.
Why it matters
Our customers and partners support our mission every time they buy a bag of coffee. They deserve to see what that support actually produces. Beyond accountability, measurement helps us get better. It shows us where the programme works, where people need more support, and what to focus on next. And for the wider social enterprise sector, every organisation that takes this seriously makes the case stronger that business really can be a force for good.
108 hours in January is where we’re starting. As we lock down our methodology and begin publishing monthly figures, we want to show clearly how those hours turn into economic value, public savings, and better lives.
A cup of Old Spike coffee should be two things: brilliant to drink, and genuinely impactful.
• • •
Old Spike is a Community Interest Company and London’s first specialty coffee roastery operating as a social enterprise. Visit oldspikeroastery.com to learn more.
