Beyond the Numbers: on the road to achieving public value in community support organisations

Objective: To explore public value as a managementtool for measuring outcomes, in Community SupportOrganisations (CSOs) and determine if further researchis warranted.Design: A literature review on public value and outcomemeasurement in the community service sector wasconducted to evaluate how public value best fits withCSOs.Setting: Public value has not previously been appliedto measuring outcomes in CSOs and could providebeneficial information to assist in obtaining governmentfunding as fiscal resources decline.Main outcome measures: The following question wasconsidered; Can a public value framework be used as amanagement tool by CSOs to measure the value of theirservice? A flow chart applying a public value frameworkto outcome measurement of CSOs was developed.Results: Key elements identified were indicators,measures and outcomes. Stakeholders included;government, community sector, CSOs and consumer.A public value framework has the potential to be usedfor measuring outcomes in the community sectorhowever realworld application is still required.Conclusion: This study provided preliminary applicationfor a larger study and has provided evidence of a publicvalue framework having the potential to be applied asan outcome measurement tool for CSOs