Valuing the impact of our community partnerships and programs

Understanding the social value that we create for our communities through targeted activities and programs is a priority for Stockland. Measuring and reporting this value allows us to improve decision making processes, enhance stakeholder relationships and identify opportunities to improve our operational performance – all whilst demonstrating sustainability leadership.

To enhance our approach to improving social value across the business, Stockland engaged KPMG to develop a strategic framework and tool, the Community Partnership Impact Tool, to assess the social and business value generated by our community partnerships and programs. This built on the Social Return on Investment work we undertook in 2018 on our Retirement Living communities. Using this tool, we were able to measure the social and business impact of our current national community programs, including Live Life Get Active, The Heart Foundation Walking Groups, Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, Bowls Australia and ABCN.

We can now identify the financial value these programs deliver to the community and Stockland, assigning an indicative dollar value on their impact. Using this tool, the total social value generated through Stockland’s partnership with the above five community programs has been estimated at over $6.45 million. Similarly, the benefit provided to Stockland through running these programs has been estimated at $2.79 million.

As an example, Stockland's partnership with Live Life Get Active, now in its fifth year, creates significant social value by promoting health and wellbeing and strengthening community connection, with over 8,000 participants in FY19. Using our social impact tool, we estimate that this has helped generate $2.4 million in health and wellbeing benefits, and provided $2.7 million in social value to the participants.

In addition to quantifying impacts, the tool also enables us to identify the key sources of value that are we are not currently able to monetise. The diagram below outlines the nine social outcomes prioritised under our framework for national community partnerships, and demonstrates how Live Life Get Active contributes to those outcomes. As can be seen below, Live Life Get Active contributes to positive outcome in particular through enhancing social participation and increasing connection, enabling participants to adopt more active lifestyles and enhancing their health and wellbeing.

We will continue to use this tool to improve our decision making when delivering our community partnerships and programs, ensuring we maximise benefits to our customers, the community and our business.