When a funder, a commissioner or a social value clause in a contract asks you to put a pound figure on your impact, choosing a tool usually comes down to where that figure comes from. Social Value Engine is built for the analysis itself: a structured Social Return on Investment (SROI) calculation, backed by a large library of financial proxies and independent accreditation. Makerble is built for the work that produces the figure. It records what your programmes deliver, day to day, and turns those records into outcomes, financial values and reports as you go.

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Where Social Value Engine is strong

Social Value Engine was developed by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and the consultancy Rose Regeneration in response to the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. It is accredited by Social Value International and used by more than 250 organisations, many of them councils, NHS bodies, colleges and housing associations.

Its proxy library holds more than 650 financial proxies drawn from over 100 sources, including New Economy Manchester, NHS England and the ONS. Each proxy is recorded with its source, publication date and unit of measurement, and the library is adjusted for inflation every year.

The calculation engine guides users through the full SROI method, including deadweight, attribution, displacement and drop-off, for both forecast and evaluative analyses. Every figure in a finished report can be traced back to the proxy and adjustments behind it. Where a funder or board needs independent sign-off, Social Value Engine also offers reports assured by an accredited practitioner.

For an organisation whose priority is a defensible, accredited SROI report, that combination is hard to beat.

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Where Makerble differs

An SROI analysis is only as good as the quantities that go into it: how many people completed the course, how many moved into work, how many businesses were supported. For many organisations, gathering those quantities is the hard part. They sit in spreadsheets, registers and survey exports, and someone has to count them up before the analysis can begin. That is why Social Value Engine's Team and Pro plans accept spreadsheet uploads.

Makerble starts one step earlier. It combines four elements in one workspace:

• A CRM for every individual and organisation your programmes touch.
• Scheduling for sessions and events.
• Surveys that join up responses from the same person over time.
• An impact module that calculates outcomes, Progress Trackers and financial values from those records automatically.

Financial values therefore become a layer on top of the data you already collect, rather than a separate exercise at the end of the year.

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Financial values that update as you work

In Makerble, you can assign a financial value to any Progress Tracker in a project. Each time a colleague records an outcome against that tracker, the project's financial value updates, and an itemised breakdown shows how much each outcome contributes.

You can choose values from Makerble's library or create your own, recording the methodology and source behind each one. Organisations in the same Makerble Network can share their values, so a funder or umbrella body can ask every partner to use one consistent set.

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Different values for different outcomes

Real outcomes rarely carry a single price. A young person who leaves a programme for further education creates a different kind of value from one who moves into paid work.

In Makerble, each of those outcomes has its own Progress Tracker, so each can carry its own financial value. The total therefore reflects what actually happened to each person, rather than one average applied to everyone, and your reports still show how many people reached each outcome.

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The Sustainable Development Goals and other frameworks

Social Value Engine maps its proxies to national and international reporting frameworks, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Makerble holds each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a ready-made Impact Framework, with its targets and indicators beneath it, alongside the outcomes you define yourself. The same records that feed your financial values can therefore be reported against the goals your funders and partners care about.

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Using both together

Some organisations need a formal, accredited SROI report once a year but want live figures for the rest of it. For them, the two platforms can work side by side:

• Makerble records delivery through the year. It produces the outcome quantities and a running financial value as you go.
• Social Value Engine handles the formal analysis. At year end, the totals export from Makerble as a spreadsheet and feed into the SROI analysis and its assurance.

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At a glance

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Which is the right fit

Neither platform is simply better. If your main requirement is an SROI report that will stand up to scrutiny from a commissioner, auditor or board, Social Value Engine's accredited method, proxy library and assurance service are built for exactly that.

If your harder problem is collecting reliable numbers in the first place, Makerble is likely to suit you better. That applies when outcomes sit across several programmes, staff record them in different places, and the financial value needs to be current rather than calculated once a year.

The honest answer for most organisations is to ask what question you most need the platform to answer. If it is "how do we produce a defensible SROI ratio?", Social Value Engine is the natural starting point. If it is "how do we know, at any point in the year, what difference our work is making and what it is worth?", Makerble is the better starting point.

Curious how financial values would work across your own programmes? Book a demo with our team and we'll set up a trial account where you can see the value of the platform for yourself.