Week 2:3 Measuring Social Impact in the Third Sector

I cycled to work across the Town Moor this morning – going from Jesmond, across Claremont Rd and then into Leazes Park.  All the public flat spaces have cows on them, or rather bullocks, the kind of young bovine that is destined for slaughter I would guess since I did not see udders.  Who may graze cattle on the Moor and in Leazes Park?  I am told that if one has freedom of the city, if you are one of the freemen (male of female) that one is allowed to graze your cattle there.  My older son’s teacher of a few years ago is a freeman.  I don’t know if she owns any cattle.  However it seems that, as well as having grazing rights, freemen play a strong role, a largely invisible role, in maintaining the moor and city green spaces.

As I cycled through the gates that serve to slow me down and keep the cattle in where they need to be kept in, I thought about the utter uninterrupted beauty of the far green hill and trees, softly padded with mist and dusted with rain.  I cannot see the efforts put in to keep the space as it is.  For me, that would be a measure of the effectiveness of those efforts.  All I can see are cowpats and pathways and green.  Joy in the heart of a modern city.

If I was to try and put a value on this for myself I would not be able to.  The lift that my heart felt, the speed of my bicycle, the wind at my back.  The gates, the cows that are not cows but bullocks.  And yet organisations that take public money are expected to quantify this.  Or are they?

In their paper “Developments in Social Impact Measurement in the Third Sector: Scaling Up or Dumbing Down?” Jane Gibbon and Colin Dey say “The objective of social valuation and impact measurement in the third sector is to understand (in social, environmental and economic terms) what difference an organisation’s activities make to the world and to communicate that value to the organisation itself and to its stakeholders (new economics foundation, 2009)”

I am simply glad.  I am glad that somewhere the freemen exist and, as their website http://www.freemenofnewcastle.org/ states “The Freemen of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne can trace their origins back to Anglo-Saxon times where the free men were a middle class, comprised of those who were permitted to carry arms for the defence of the city.

The organisation survives into modern times as a conservation body, primarily aimed at protecting the many of the parks, Town Moors and green spaces for the benefit of the City’s residents.”