The new GovTech startup driving resources into community services

The Social Value Exchange is a GovTech marketplace which is channeling resources from £25 million public spend into community projects across London.

After a successful MVP channeling much-needed resources into community services and projects across London, online marketplace the Social Value Exchange was fundrasing through SeedTribe to support its UK expansion.

Every year the government spends billions on goods and services, with the suppliers then asked to give back to local communities under The Social Value Act. The Act is a tool to help commissioners get more value for money out of procurement and encourages them to talk to their local provider market or community to design better services.

Co-founder and CEO of The Social Value Exchange, Dan Ebanks, says until now relatively little has been done to drive delivery of the intended benefit of the Social Value Act, and there is a general perception that it has underwhelmed.

“Central Government has not supported the enactment of the legislation with too much guidance; a blessing or a curse for those in local government, depending on their attitude to risk and innovation. Our team recognised an obvious opportunity to help government leverage its spend and make the most of what remains a radical and transformative piece of legislation.”

The Social Value Exchange is an online marketplace for government to generate extra resources from their private contractors for community services. Through their MVP they have helped local government direct £600,000 of resources, from £25 million in public contract spend in the last two years, to support initiatives including the Hackney Community and Voluntary Sector, Toynbee Hall and the Macular Society.

Their customers include Clarion Housing Group (the UK’s largest housing association), a key inner-London borough, and Notting Hill Genesis, a G15 housing association. The platform was also listed Public’s 100 next-generation govtech businesses.

“The government spends around £268 billion a year on private suppliers. Our mission is to help government leverage as much of this spend as possible to maximise resources for local communities, for everyone’s benefit.” Dan said

Liv Sibony, CEO of SeedTribe, said “As an increasing number of people are seeing that profit-with-purpose businesses are being created, we are seeing some great opportunities to invest in businesses that achieve social value, as well as profit. The Social Value Exchange is a great example of huge value being delivered to local communities while having a strong, high-margin, scalable business model.”

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