REAP - social accounting

REAP recognises that good sustainable development at a local as well as global level has a social dimension as well as the more obvious economic and environmental elements. Therefore, our work in the community means we must be prepared to engage with individuals and groups and address the issues which they feel are important to them.

We aim to promote cohesive communities that have the ability to meet their own needs and do this by engaging in the following actions:

Social Auditing

Social auditing is a straightforward process by which agencies, organisations and local groups can gauge and illustrate their social, economic and environmental benefits and limitations. Simply, it is a method of self appraisal to determine whether an organisation meets its stated values and objectives within its own working community.

REAP have been the lead agent in facilitating this process locally in partnership with Community Business Scotland who have provided most of the training and support together with the development of a comprehensive self-help pack.

Organisations that have been involved have varied widely and represented all sectors of the community including community enterprises, credit unions and after school clubs. Feedback from participants has been universally positive!

How could Social Auditing benefit my organisation?

There are a number of reasons why your organisation might want to undertake a social audit: to improve accountability to different stakeholder groups, to increase efficiency and effectiveness, to have a systematic method for integrated performance and strategic planning, to plan an ethical marketing campaign.

If your organisation is in the community or voluntary sector social auditing offers a way of measuring your performance beyond the purely financial. This can demonstrate to funders and other stakeholders how you are doing in meeting your social objectives and can help to quantify and highlight all the added benefits which your organisation delivers.

Is Social Auditing a lot of work?

Although you might think it’s a good idea to report on your non-commercial objectives you might feel that there is simply not enough time or resources or that it is a daunting and rather threatening prospect that should be best avoided! However, many local projects have either completed or are in the process of completing their first social audit and have found the exercise to be quite uncomplicated and very worthwhile. Ideally the process of social auditing is integrated into your existing reporting mechanisms with any gaps in the information being collected in an simple manner.

How can I find out more?

A copy of REAP's own internal social audit and a review we carried out into the process are included in the download page. This will give an idea of what can be achieved. The following external web links are Social Auditing organisations whom REAP works in partnership with. Their pages give an in-depth introduction to the subject.

Community Business Scotland - aims to promote, encourage and support the principles and practice of community owned and controlled enterprises, enabling local communities to become more self reliant and sustainable.

Social Audit Network - a not-for-profit company with a membership operating throughout the UK. SAN lists the approved social auditors, resident and practising in the UK. SAN also has over 1,400 people subscribed to receive the free monthly SAN circular and may use the email Network and the circular to share information and make contact with other practitioners.

If you have any queries about social auditing you can phone us on 01542 888070 or to e-mail REAP click here

REAP staff offer the use of their expertise gained in running a small social enterprise as a service to other social enterprises or community projects. Services offered include financial administration, payroll services, desk top publishing etc. As REAP is a not-for-profit company, and can integrate our own administrative mechanisms with any contracting organisations, this means we can offer a service which will save voluntary organisations time and money.

Working with Community Groups and Agencies

We believe that people are key to the concept of sustainable development and aim to bring this approach into all that we do. This is not to say that we take a simplistic ‘communities good, agencies bad’ approach to issues, but that we work with a range of stakeholders on initiatives which help us all to achieve our common goals.

In the past this has included community consultation and engagement work within the context of community planning; healthy eating and food access; youth consultation processes, community led action research.