Social Value Portal and whatimpact National Social Value Marketplace® have partnered to tackle a key challenge in public sector procurement: turning Social Value commitments into credible, deliverable outcomes for communities by working with the organisations best placed to achieve them — Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprises (VCSEs).
In this interview, whatimpact’s CEO Tiia Sammallahti explains why VCSEs are central to meaningful Social Value and how the partnership creates a robust and complete approach to impact reporting.
My name is Tiia, and I am the CEO and founder of whatimpact. We run the National Social Value Marketplace®, a nationwide system for public sector suppliers to match with hyper-local VCSEs.
We launched in 2018 and work closely with the VCSE sector. My background is in business — property, hospitality, marketing, consultancy — and I’ve always been keen on Corporate Social Responsibility, set up a charity myself and work for a large one for a while. I became a start-up entrepreneur when launching whatimpact to solve the challenge of suppliers and VCSEs finding each other. While matchmaking systems have existed before, whatimpact’s approach is truly unique — combining verified VCSE data, two-sided matching, and a strong focus on comprehensive impact reporting. As Social Value continues to evolve, the emphasis is shifting toward more strategic matching. For public sector procurement, this means moving beyond listing inputs and outputs to demonstrating genuine, measurable outcomes, while also enabling a more strategic approach for suppliers to partner effectively with VCSEs.
Our National Social Value Marketplace lists over 300,000 organisations nationwide, mapped to boroughs and councils, so suppliers can find local partner. We give all VCSEs equal opportunity and visibility, and validate them with government and other verified data.
whatimpact are very excited about this partnership. These two different impact reporting methods give great insight into what is happening on the ground in public sector tenders.
The Social Value TOM System™ provides proxy values for different interventions based on public data and demonstrates reduced public costs and considers wider benefits, such as improved wellbeing of people in monetised form.
By contrast, whatimpact’s reporting shows what happened between the supplier and VCSE delivering a project: the partnership, investment, scale, and KPIs. VCSEs are empowered to report on outcomes and impact and provide evidence on their measurement. They can present supportive case studies, testimonials, and photos & videos. That gives “flesh around the bones” of Social Value. By using AI, this impact data on various interventions create a truthful and powerful story of the social value delivered through public sector procurement.
Whatever TOM System™ Measures a supplier is targeting — employment, environment, or community engagement — VCSE partners can be found to deliver them. There are TOM System Measures that can be achieved direct partnerships with VCSEs. Also, some of the TOM System Measures can achieved through indirect support. The role of VCSEs is big in the new TOM System.
VCSEs are the backbone of our society. They play a bigger role than we often realise — there’s a charity or social enterprise for almost everything. They act as an extension of public sector services, bringing local knowledge, insight into beneficiary needs, and networks that span schools, businesses, and community organisations.
Their projects are always based around real need. When suppliers partner with VCSEs, they provide resources, funding, skills, volunteering, and services that support VCSEs to run and expand these projects.
Right now, many VCSEs are struggling financially. Critical interventions are at risk due to limited grant funding. Social Value activities represent a new and vital way for VCSEs to sustain and grow their impact — provided suppliers engage with them in a meaningful manner.
It is important for both the Public Sector contractors and suppliers to acknowledge that VCSE projects are very different, and contract size and length affect to what kind of partnerships can deliver the biggest impact. It is important that suppliers have access to wide range of VCSEs that run both small, instant crisis interventions, but also preventative and systems change generating impact for longer contracts.
It is vital to involve VCSEs from the very start of projects. While Social Value requirements are linked to procurement, Social Value itself should be strategic — aligned with a supplier’s values and capabilities, not added as an afterthought. Mandating suppliers to work with specific VCSEs, or requiring donations and volunteering commitments they cannot choose themselves, often results in fragmented, tokenistic social value. For Social Value to evolve into a truly sustainable practice, the approach must encourage genuine alignment, long-term partnerships, and integration into core business strategies. This is what whatimpact supports suppliers to do.
Many TOM System Measures state that you can partner with VCSEs to achieve outcomes — from biodiversity and clean spaces to health, wellbeing, employment, and work placements. The variety of large and ways of partnering and the outcomes of the partnerships are flexible, which support suppliers own choice. If suppliers identify VCSE partners early, they can align interventions strategically with their corporate Social Value targets.
Often, the challenge comes when partnerships weren’t formed at the planning or bidding stage. Bids may include generic Social Value statements without defining delivery partners. Then, when contracts start, delivery teams have to begin from scratch.
Our system helps overcome this. Suppliers can find partners in one or two days using our matching tools. They can filter VCSEs by TOM System Measures, see their needs and projects, or post offers that invite VCSEs to apply for partnerships. This makes the process quick and seamless. Our clients tell us this system to be ‘magic’.
Volunteering is the most challenging area, as it requires coordination for timeframes, types of volunteering, facilitation and record keeping. Our volunteering hub helps suppliers promote opportunities to staff, capture hours, and gather case studies and testimonials, reducing complexity and admin. Our offer based matching system supports meaningful volunteering where team efforts, skills and company competence are utilised.
Together we provide two lenses on the same impact. The TOM System captures inputs and outputs and monetises them, while whatimpact captures qualitative data — the human stories – how the activities change the lives of the beneficiaries or the environmental stage.
This combination is unique, even internationally. Monetisation tools usually lack qualitative detail to back up each activity – or the qualitative data requirement is standardised not acknowledging the unique nature of each VCSE project: intervention methods, group sizes and ages, beneficiary backgrounds, and the starting and end point of the beneficiary situation is always different. That’s why qualitative, verified outcome data and supporting stories are essential. This partnership ensures both numbers and narratives to be captured together.
When we talk about “locally relevant” VCSEs, it doesn’t just mean organisations with a postcode in the area. Many operate nationally or across multiple locations, running highly relevant projects in different areas. Some are medium or larger sized organisations delivering interventions smaller local groups couldn’t manage alone. Also, each council or operational area does not have all kind of VCSEs registered in their area in the first place.
Our platform defines relevance by where interventions take place and who benefits, not just where an office is registered. This creates equal opportunities for VCSEs and introduces councils and suppliers to new partners they might not otherwise have found. By using our system, councils have been positively surprised what kind of organisations our system and they suppliers present in tenders.
One of the big goals of this partnership is to make reporting credible and robust while reducing admin. Activities on whatimpact are tagged to TOM System Measures at the match stage. When projects are delivered, VCSEs report back using our semi-automated system, and again tag their reporting data, outcomes and case studies to TOM System Measures.
This produces reports with qualitative data, case studies, and verification of inputs and outputs — structured to TOM System requirements. These reports can then be shared directly with Social Value Portal for validation.
It means suppliers no longer need to collect screenshots, emails, or ad-hoc reports. VCSEs don’t have to duplicate effort. It saves time and money, reducing admin so more resources can be focused on delivering Social Value itself. As the suppliers get the report automatically, time saving is massive. And the data far beyond procurement reporting in CSR, ESG and annual stakeholder communication.