Place-Based Social Value Measurement
The real estate market, from investors to tenants, seeks transparency and actionable insights on social value delivered through real estate assets.
Thrive helps those working in the real estate industry measure, evidence and communicate the social value their work creates.
The real estate industry must measure social value before it’s obligated to
Real estate assets have a direct and tangible impact on people’s lives, shaping their homes and workplaces, their health and wellbeing, and the quality of the places where communities live, work and play.
Having largely addressed the environmental pillar of ESG, the sector is expected to measure the social pillar too, driven by:
- a fuller view of value and return on investment (ROI), expressed in financial terms everyone understands
- investors who expect purpose alongside profit
- a stronger reputation with planners, local authorities, occupiers and communities
- staff, occupiers and communities who increasingly expect it
- a chance to show leadership and benchmark against peers
The S pillar
This has been the hardest to evidence in the past, and the one most often met with simple storytelling or figures without context.
In this context, real estate social impact data has to do two things: meet the standard investors, regulators and planning authorities already audit against, and tell a clear story about the impact assets have on the people around them.
Most organisations manage one, rarely both. Thrive exists so real estate can do both with confidence.
Social Value Generated Across the Asset Lifecycle
Social value at an asset is shaped from the moment a scheme is designed, through planning submission, delivery, and across every year the asset is in use. Thrive empowers you to capture place-based social impact and convert it into evidence-backed reporting you can defend to a board, an auditor, or a regulator.
Planning
- Identify where your efforts will deliver the most value. Use Local Needs Analysis to align activity with what local communities around an asset or scheme actually need.
- Forecast the likely impact of a campaign or initiative before committing resources, budget or investment.
- The same evidence base supports planning statements, Section 106 and 75 agreements, and the frameworks for reporting them.
Capture
- Aggregate data from people closest to each asset, including asset and property managers, key suppliers, occupiers and local communities without additional expense or requiring them to log in.
- Assign reporting responsibilities to teams and suppliers and let the platform follow up. Automated reminders, progress tracking and approval steps control input before any figure reaches a report.
- Capture data with custom forms completed per asset per reporting cycle, with clear definitions and examples provided.
- Attach qualitative evidence including photographs, questionnaire responses, and occupier and resident feedback to the activity and metrics measured, ensuring the story and the data are assembled together and give the full picture.
Measurement
- Turn a long list of activities into quantified outcomes. Each place-based activity maps to outputs, frameworks, and asset value where desired.
- Map your activity to the Impact Evaluation Standard, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, CSRD, UK SRS, GRI, SASB, ISSB, GRESB, and your own internal frameworks.
- Adjustments for additionality, attribution, displacement, deadweight and drop-off keep totals conservative rather than overstated.
- Where activity doesn’t fit a predefined metric, create your own or use Real Estate Metrics, a focused set that monetises the social, environmental and wellbeing value an asset provides to the people who live, work or spend time near it. These cover Placemaking, Community Infrastructure, Environmental Stewardship and Workforce Wellbeing, for as long as the asset is owned, operated and maintained.
Reporting
- Live dashboards bring together data from across your organisation, giving teams a clear view of activity, outcomes and progress.
- Design and share board-level briefings and full impact reports in real time with recognised methodologies and reporting frameworks, reducing manual effort while improving confidence in your evidence.
- Toggle monetised values on or off depending on what you want to show.
- Outputs are structured for GRESB submissions, ISSB disclosures, UK SRS and SFDR reporting.
- Highlight standout activities and stories alongside ready-to-use data for annual reports, press activity, LP questionnaires and more.
Why Thrive is different
One Standard, independently governed: The Impact Evaluation Standard applies the same set of metrics, proxy values and evidence guidance across every submission, and is set by an independent Steering Committee. Social impact is expressed in monetary terms, using a specialist methodology aligned with OECD guidance on wellbeing evaluation.
Green Book methodology: The framework is built on HM Treasury Green Book principles, using publicly available data sources you can scrutinise.
No fees for your supply chain: Your suppliers, partners, and contributors add their data free of charge, removing blockers to visibility.
A partner, not vendor: Dedicated onboarding consultancy and ongoing Customer Success support every real estate client. Our consultants gather relevant information from you and recommend the most appropriate metrics based on your priorities, data availability, and maturity. This gives you a starting point, and a plan for expanding metrics over time.
Assurance: Validation checks entries against more than 1,000 rules at the point of entry, across 150+ core Impact Evaluation Standard metrics, catching errors before they multiply through a proxy value. Verification adds an independent assessment scored across nine quality criteria and issues a Data Quality Mark for the portfolio.
Built for the people who carry ESG
Social impact reporting is rarely one person’s job. Thrive supports those who build, own, run and shape places, and the communities they serve.
The methodology behind the measurement
Trusted with complex impact data, at scale
- The Impact Evaluation Standard, which underpins Thrive’s measurement methodology, provides a consistent set of metrics, proxy values, and evidence guidance for quantifying social impact in monetary terms.
- It is aligned with HM Treasury Green Book guidance and OECD guidance on wellbeing evaluation, and governed by an independent Steering Committee. Members of Thrive’s team helped shape guidance in this field and continue to contribute to its development.
- It is the only social impact framework whose development was part-funded by the UK Government and the EU.
- Thrive aligns with ISO 27001, carries out yearly penetration tests and holds Cyber Essentials Plus certifications.
“Thrive helped us move from ‘we do a lot of good things’ to ‘we have a consistent method for capturing, categorising and reporting that activity across our portfolio’. It gives us a stronger evidence base for investor conversations and annual reporting, and a more sophisticated way to explain how our assets contribute socially as well as financially.”
See it for yourself
See what Thrive can show you.
A 30-minute walkthrough is the fastest way to see whether Thrive fits the way you need to report.
We will tailor the demo to your sector and your current setup and answer the questions that matter to you.
Let us show you why our customers value Thrive.