Creating and measuring social value: lessons from our social value target journey

In 2020, we launched our ambitious target to create $250m of social value by 2025 through the work of shared value partnerships and programs, funded by the Lendlease Foundation. Today, at the end of June 2025, we are proud to share that we’ve not only met that goal — we’ve exceeded it, achieving $284.6 million in externally verified social value over the past five years. 

Achieving this target represents the real and measurable impact possible when people, partnerships and purpose come together around a common goal, but how did we get here and what insights can we share so that others can create meaningful social value in communities. 

Let’s start at the beginning. For over seventy years, Lendlease has been guided by the simple principles of doing the right thing and leaving a positive legacy. This mindset was the driving force behind the establishment of the Lendlease Foundation in 1983, which supports charitable, community, and wellbeing efforts.  

While making a positive contribution to society has always been a part of the way we do things, in 2020 we decided to do something ambitious. We wanted to try and measure the impact that programs and initiatives we supported had on the quality of life of individuals and communities. Once we decided to measure our impact, setting a target was the next logical step. But what kind of target to choose?

We wanted a target that would bring the Sustainability Framework’s social focus areas – economic prosperity, community inclusion and wellbeing – to life. These are the areas where we can make the greatest impact through our work across real estate Investments, Development and Construction.

We wanted to set a target which would measure improved outcomes for people and communities that demonstrated the actual impact created and not just the dollars spent. We wanted a target that would create opportunities for Lendlease employees to be involved in ways that were meaningful to them and the needs of their neighbourhoods, carrying on the legacy of the Lendlease Foundation. We recognised that social outcomes look different across our diverse locations and so we wanted a target that would unite us around a common, global goal. And we wanted to be bold and ambitious about the difference we could make.  

In summary, setting a ‘social value’ target matched our desire to focus on social outcomes related to our Sustainability Framework’s social focus areas and track the scale of impact on people’s lives over time.  

By measuring positive social outcomes, we aimed to shift the corporate citizenship narrative from philanthropy to social value creation. We deliberately wanted to make this shift because we wanted to measure the positive impact activities and programs had on the quality of life for individuals and communities rather than the size of our cheque. So less about us, and more about the positive change we were trying to create in people’s lives through programs aligned to our social focus areas: economic prosperity, community inclusion and wellbeing. We also wanted to build long term partnerships with non-profits because these long term, trusted partnerships create shared value: non-profits receive all important monetary and volunteer support, while Lendlease employees are given opportunities to help in ways that are most meaningful to them and their community.

Social value is created when an activity makes a positive impact on an individual’s quality of life or improves the resilience of a community. Measuring social value involves placing a monetary value on the quantified positive change people experience through a program or initiative. Expressing social value in monetary terms is the clearest way to track and understand the scale of impact on people’s lives over time. So, the $250m in our target is not the amount Lendlease has invested in our shared value partnerships, it represents the amount of ‘social value’ our partners have created, expressed in monetary terms.

Back in 2020, social value measurement was relatively new. We needed a simple yet robust method to measure the change people experience across a series of social outcomes but there was no off-the-shelf social value tool that could support capturing social value on a global scale credibly.  

We worked with independent social impact consultants, Social Impax and Think Impact, to create a global social value tool using the principles of Social Return on Investment (SROI). The diversity of programs and jurisdictions in which Lendlease’s shared value partnership programs were conducted meant that a bespoke tool was needed. The tool incorporated progress tracking against our target, a multi-year assessment conducted annually over 5 years by Social Impax and Think Impact through direct validation of changes experienced with stakeholders. Using this assessment methodology and independent verification process provided accurate and authentic quantitative and qualitative data.

To ensure that the social value captured was not based on assumptions but validated outcomes, stakeholders were directly engaged as part of the process. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with stakeholders, including partner organisations and beneficiaries, to understand what changes they experienced and how important these changes were in context.  

To avoid over-claiming, the process included looking for potential negative outcomes, as well as the possible benefits that could be experienced by stakeholders. The social value modelling also considered the portion of Lendlease’s investment and in-kind contribution in the context of the total cost of delivering the community partnership programs, and the outcome attribution. Social value modelling activities were undertaken by accredited social value practitioners. And each year’s modelling outputs were scrutinised through robust technical reviews and validation workshops before being finalised and reported. In May each year, the independent consultancies provided a verified yearly total of social value in monetary terms. This figure was reported in the Lendlease Annual Report and the ESG Databook alongside other qualitative and quantitative information. 

By measuring the effectiveness of a program, we could work out which programs were having their intended impact. Understanding this impact helped us direct our funding and work with partners to improve the outcomes of programs which were less impactful or shift our efforts to meet evolving community need. Undertaking a ‘social return on investment’ along the way, provided invaluable insights that helped us fine tune our partner selection, and helped us successfully manage 50+ partnerships and programs.

Lendlease’s social value target applied to the work of our shared value partnerships and programs funded via the Lendlease Foundation, above and beyond any Lendlease project or asset requirements. We supported specific social impact programs and initiatives run by our shared value partners and then measured the change participants and stakeholders experienced to understand the social value we created. Over the five years of the target, 50+ shared value partners and programs were supported and assessed across Australia, United Kingdom, Italy, USA, Singapore, Malaysia, China and Japan.  

We looked to support partnerships and programs that: 

• aligned with the social focus areas of the LL Sustainability Framework (in some cases, programs also aligned with the environmental focus areas)
• supported the ethos of the LL Foundation by providing opportunities for engagement with our people
• were willing to support our measurement efforts to help create greater positive social impact.

Below is a small sample of the shared value partnerships and programs supported by the Lendlease Foundation across our four markets throughout 2020-2025, highlighting the social value created and the estimated SROI.

Along the way we have spoken at many conferences, think tanks and panels to share lessons learned on multiple aspects of the target including governance, funding mechanisms, measurement, reporting, partnering with non-profits, and employee engagement through volunteering. Our actions have helped shift the industry narrative from philanthropy to social value creation, aligning with growing stakeholder and industry expectations and the recent advent of market peers announcing social value targets. We will continue to focus on reporting social impact outcomes annually and use a simple and robust financial proxy methodology for evaluating social return on investment. Lendlease Foundation will continue to support charities and not-for-profit organisations in their important work and find opportunities for Lendlease people to get involved through volunteering.