How to write a winning social value bid response

The most consequential decision in writing a social value response happens before you write a single word: understanding exactly what the buyer is asking you to respond to, and how they will score it.

Different buyers use different frameworks, and those frameworks have fundamentally different structures. A buyer using PPN 06/20 will typically ask you to respond against five named themes — COVID-19 recovery, wellbeing, helping local communities, equal opportunity, and net zero. A buyer using the National TOMs framework will be scoring against specific outcome measures with published proxy values. A buyer using SROI will expect a different kind of calculation methodology entirely. A bespoke local authority framework may have its own named priorities — a council with a declared commitment to care leavers or a housing association with a strong environmental programme will weight those themes differently from a generic framework.

The ITT document — particularly the social value question, the evaluation criteria, and any linked guidance documents — contains the answer to what this buyer is actually looking for. Read it carefully and look for: the named framework if referenced, the specific themes or headers you are asked to respond to, the word count or page limit per theme, whether quantification is explicitly required, and any example commitments the buyer has listed as relevant. These details define the structure of your response before any content decisions are made.

A response that addresses themes the buyer is not scoring, or that uses a framework structure the buyer is not applying, wastes both word count and evaluator goodwill. Structure first; content second.

The central competency of a strong social value response is the ability to translate intentions into numbers — specific, sourced, citable numbers that an evaluator can assess and, later, hold you accountable against. Vague assertion and genuine quantification look superficially similar on a page but score entirely differently.

Consider two ways of writing the same commitment. The first: "We will prioritise local employment and training throughout the contract." The second: "We will recruit a minimum of two employees from long-term unemployment within six months of contract start, generating £25,308 of proxy social value at £12,654 per person per year, as measured by National TOMs Outcome TOM 1a (Creating Employment for Local People)." Both sentences describe the same underlying intention. Only the second is scoreable.

Proxy values are the mechanism that makes quantification possible. Published datasets — principally the National TOMs outcome measures, the HACT Social Value Bank, and HM Treasury Green Book unit costs — attach a recognised monetary figure to a specific social outcome. These are not estimates; they are published figures from recognised institutions that evaluators and procurement teams are familiar with. Using them correctly, and citing them accurately, demonstrates that your quantification has a defensible basis.

The social value calculator shows how these proxy values work in practice, using real published figures. A training day is valued at £320 under National TOMs. An apprenticeship year at £13,500. A local employment hire for a person from long-term unemployment at £12,654. Disability employment at £22,400 per person under the HACT Social Value Bank. Each of these figures is traceable to a published source — which is precisely what evaluators look for when they apply a credibility test to your numbers.

Where the buyer uses SROI methodology, quantification requires additional steps: applying a deadweight factor (what would have happened anyway without the contract), an attribution factor (what portion of the outcome is genuinely attributable to your organisation's activity rather than others'), and a displacement factor (whether your activity displaces equivalent activity elsewhere). See the glossary for definitions of each. These adjustments typically reduce a gross social value figure by thirty to fifty per cent, which is why a credible SROI-based response will show a lower net figure than gross — and why an overstated claim that ignores these adjustments is easy for an experienced evaluator to spot.

The internal structure of a high-scoring social value response follows a consistent pattern, regardless of which framework the buyer is using.

Each step of the process described in this guide — identifying the framework, selecting proportionate commitments, applying the right proxy values, and producing a structured written response — is handled by HelpMeBid's workflow. See how it works: upload your ITT documents, confirm the framework detected, build your commitment schedule from a library of fully referenced proxy values, and export a written narrative ready to paste into your tender response or submit as a separate social value document.

The proxy value library draws on the same published datasets referenced throughout this guide — National TOMs, HACT Social Value Bank, HM Treasury Green Book — so every figure your response contains is traceable to the same sources an evaluator will recognise. You are not generating numbers; you are applying a published methodology to a specific set of deliverable commitments.