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About

About Social Value Trust

Social Value Trust is a Canadian social value measurement service, powered by CANCEA's ONEMODEL platform and built and operated by Symcura. Together they represent more than 20 years of social value measurement work and more than 400 client engagements across housing, pensions, infrastructure, health, and policy.

Why We Exist

Billions are invested each year in programmes, policies, assets, and services intended to improve lives. Very little of that investment is guided by evidence that shows who actually benefits, by how much, and through what pathways.

SVT was founded to close that gap. Not with borrowed averages or fragmented estimates - but with person-level evidence generated from one connected model. Evidence that boards, regulators, funders, and the public can defend.

By the Numbers

20+ yrs
Developing social value measurement science
CANCEA / RiskAnalytica, since 2002
400+
Client engagements across housing, pensions, infrastructure, health, and policy
CANCEA engagement record, 2002-2026
Externally reviewed
Bottom-up agent-based methodology refined through external review and practical application
CANCEA / RiskAnalytica, 2002-2026
ICPM
Featured Canadian case in the ICPM Social Infrastructure Blueprint
ICPM, 2026

How SVT, Symcura, and CANCEA Fit Together

Social Value Trust

The public-facing brand through which ONEMODEL's social value capabilities are made available to organisations. SVT is where you engage - for consultations, tiered services, and evidence products.

Symcura

The group dedicated to the science of decision-making and measurement. Symcura operates the platform, employs the team, and holds SVT as its social value practice.

CANCEA

The Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis. CANCEA built ONEMODEL over two decades and has delivered 400+ client engagements. The science, the platform, and the engagement record are shared with SVT.

The science, the platform, and the team are the same. SVT is how social value evidence reaches you.

How We Work

Five principles guide every SVT engagement:

  1. People before totals

    Individual welfare paths are preserved before any aggregate is reported. The total never hides who it is really about.

  2. Counterfactual, not before-and-after

    Social value is the difference between the world with the intervention and the world without it - never just the outcomes observed under the intervention.

  3. One connected model, not stitched-together estimates

    Hundreds of social value topics are measured in one connected model, person by person - so a benefit counted once cannot be counted again.

  4. Assumption-transparent

    Every valuation choice and calibration parameter is declared and sensitivity-tested. The methodology does not hide its assumptions - it invites scrutiny of them.

  5. Decision-grade, not truth

    SVT does not claim its models are true. It claims they are decision-grade: defensible as the basis for decisions whose consequences depend on the described situation being feasible.

What We Stand For

A Canada where every major decision about people is backed by evidence about people. Where good programmes are identified, defended, and scaled - and where weaker ones are redirected before more resources are spent.

We do not believe more social spending is automatically good, nor that less is automatically bad. We believe that evidence should decide - and that the evidence should be about real people, not averages standing in for people.

Work With Us

Tell us about your context. We will tell you what evidence is possible.

Start a Conversation
Externally reviewed methodology, developed over 20+ years400+ engagements (CANCEA, 2002-2026)Featured in the ICPM Social Infrastructure Blueprint (2026)