Three Big Lessons for Engagement Practitioners from Our Social Value Webinar

Our recent webinar From Participation to Purpose: Reimagining Social Value brought together engagement leaders from across the sector — including Dr Emanuela Savini, Mary Spencer, and guest speaker Sue Lettingham from Central Coast Council.

Together, they explored what “social value” really looks like in practice — beyond numbers, beyond participation counts, and beyond the idea that value must be monetised to matter. Based on the discussion, here are three sector-wide lessons that deserve a place in every engagement practitioner’s toolkit.

1. Social Value Can’t Be Measured by Numbers Alone

Dr Emanuela Savini opened with a clear message: we over-rely on quantitative data in engagement — and it limits our understanding of impact.

She explained that attempts to measure ROI for engagement consistently run into the same problem: the most meaningful outcomes can’t be quantified.

Counting participants or pop-ups doesn’t tell us whether people felt heard, gained confidence, or influenced decisions. And while monetising outcomes is sometimes required, it risks oversimplifying complex human change.

Instead, Emanuela introduced a three-lens framework for capturing the broader social value of engagement:

• Individual empowerment and transformation — confidence, capability, self-efficacy, personal growth, identity shifts.

• Organisational and systemic change — policy shifts, new practices, capacity-building, cross-sector collaboration.

• Societal or collective capacity — social capital, trust, cohesion, group resilience, community-led action.

This approach gives practitioners language — and evidence — to articulate the value of engagement beyond attendance statistics.

2. Ripple Effects Matter

A strong recurring theme: social value is layered, not linear.

Emanuela encouraged practitioners to “map the ripple effects” across individual, organisational and societal levels, because these domains reinforce one another and often evolve over time. She highlighted that:

• Influence often emerges long after a project ends.
• engagement builds ecosystems, not standalone wins.
• no single project “causes” transformation, but each contributes meaningfully to it.

Her advice?
Use longitudinal thinking. Build reflective touchpoints. And design measures with your stakeholders, not for them.

This shifts engagement from a one-off transaction to a sustained practice of community capacity-building.

3. Social Value Becomes Visible When People Feel Ownership

Guest speaker Sue Lettingham offered a powerful real-world example through the Central Coast Safer Cities Her Way project — a $1M Transport for NSW initiative focused on improving perceptions of safety for women, girls and gender-diverse people.

Sue emphasised that the project’s impact came from genuine co-design — “experiencing what participants experienced” rather than arriving with predetermined solutions.

Key takeaways for practitioners:

Lived experience drives better design

The project’s 20 women participants shared deeply personal, often trauma-informed insights. The team learned the importance of preparing staff for the emotional intensity that can accompany authentic storytelling.

Data is at its best when it’s human

Central Coast Council collected 136 pieces of rich qualitative data, which became a living dashboard to guide place-making decisions long beyond the pilot project.

Co-design can meaningfully shift perceptions of safety

At project start, 7 in 10 participants reported negative perceptions of safety. After interventions — lighting, activations, colour, and co-designed improvements — this dropped to 1 in 10.

For practitioners working in infrastructure, transport, precinct renewal or community development, this is a powerful example of how social value becomes tangible when people are treated as partners — not just consultees.

Looking Ahead: Social Value is an Ecosystem, Not a Metric

Across the webinar, the message was clear: engagement creates value in ways that can’t always be counted — but must always be recognised.

By moving beyond numeric reporting, applying a layered framework, and learning from real-world co-design, practitioners can articulate impact with more depth, accuracy and confidence.

Watch the Webinar & Explore the Case Study

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