What is social capital?
This is a term that is appearing more and more often and is something that social enterprises are very good at developing within their communities. According to Kay and Pearce (2003), social capital has five concrete terms. These are:
Trust: having relations of trust with people and organisations so that you feel confident and comfortable working with them.
Reciprocity and mutuality: having the sort of relations with people and organisations which mean that you do something for them without expecting immediate payback; that you help each other out; that you are prepared to work together on schemes of common advantage.
Social networks: being in touch with a wide range of people and organisations so that you get to know them; to learn to trust them and work together; to give and get information.
Shared norms of behaviour: realising that you share ideas with others of how things should be done; that you can build a common vision; that you broadly agree on what is acceptable and what is not.
Sense of commitment and belonging: realising that sharing a commitment to an area or to a group can uncover a shared understanding of issues and lead to a common sense of purpose.
You can download their information paper on social capital here
The paper provides a useful introduction and also looks at the measurement of social capital through a range of tools/methods including the Social Capital Stock-Take and social accounting.
See Measuring Impact for information on social accounting
The Nottingham Social Action Research Project (SARP)
The Nottingham SARP was an action research project that aimed to explore how social capital could be built within communities. It worked directly with local projects in the Clifton and St Ann?s wards of Nottingham to explore the links between health, well-being and social capital.
It ran from 1999 to 2002 and provided funding, consultancy and practical support to a range of projects in these wards. The following papers provide an overview of the Nottingham SARP as well as the findings from workshops to establish methods and indicators for the evaluation of social capital.
Social Capital and the Nottingham SARP (Overview) ? download here
Methods and indicators for the evaluation of social capital ? download here
To date, research that has been carried out demonstrates the role of social enterprise in the development of social capital ? these are often the things that mean a lot to local communities, but are difficult to measure.
The above papers have been included to give you an overview, identify some indicators and to provide some tools to measure them. Recognising, identifying and measuring social capital can greatly increase your interaction with your local community.
According to Kay and Pearce (2003), ?These relationships can strengthen the sense of identity and purpose of a community or an interest group?. Furthermore, funders, prospective partners and stakeholders can also understand the concept and value of social capital. This may unlock a range of opportunities for your sports social enterprise but identifying and capturing this information is important.
The Measuring Impact section of the Sports Kitbag will provide tools on how to measure social capital and can be used in-line with the tools mentioned in the papers above.