Capco and Manchester-based charity GMYN (Greater Manchester Youth Network) are celebrating the successful delivery of a project that ensures the value and benefits of GMYN’s proactive approach to supporting the city’s young people are more clearly understood and recognized.
Public sector spending is often focused on reactive solutions, whether that be health care, employment or the justice system. GMYN wanted to demonstrate the financial benefits that flow from tackling social issues in a more proactive way.
Working on a pro bono basis, the Capco team drew on its extensive expertise in the fields of economic principles, data and user experience to develop a versatile cost-savings analysis model. This enables GMYN to measure and map the costs of its proactive support for young people through its community outreach work and development programs against the level of public spending that other approaches require.
Consulting with GMYN beneficiaries and staff, the team assessed GMYN’s programs, activities and the positive changes made to the lives of individual users of its services. From there, they were able to provide a ‘benefit and cost per head’ for resource invested in those beneficiaries. This figure was then compared against other government spending on young people who rely heavily public service support.
“One of our charity sector’s strengths is applying innovation to new and existing problems that look to proactively tackle social issues,” says Adam Webster, Head of Development at GMYN. “The model Capco created for us means we can provide an accurate and meaningful analysis of our cost savings to public sector commissioners, as well as also helping us to identify potential other savings, further reducing long-term costs to the public purse.
“This is important because the charity sector plays such a vital role in delivering services alongside the public sector. In particular, we are often seizing the initiative to fill gaps that we see emerging in existing service provision. That proactive approach not only has a lasting benefit for the individuals involved, but more often than not we can deliver results at a much lower cost to public resources. So it is very important we can demonstrate not only expertise, but also that value for money.”
Richard Emmett, Managing Principal at Capco, adds: “At Capco we pride ourselves on giving back to the communities in which we live and work, so we are extremely pleased to have had this opportunity to support GMYN and the young people of Greater Manchester. The model we have created allows GMYN to clearly quantify the benefits and value of their programs, and this opportunity to work on such a project has been a fantastic experience for our team.”