ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute’s Impact Measurement and Management Community of Practice for European grant-making Foundations

EVPA endorses ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute’s Impact Measurement and Management Community of practice for European grant-making Foundations!

Why an endorsement from EVPA?

As one of the main capital providers active within the impact ecosystem, European grant-making foundations are encouraged to adopt a more engaged approach to grant-giving, by applying Venture Philanthropy.

In order to collect useful insights and take better-informed decisions, foundations need to focus on developing impact measurement and management (IMM) practices, increasing the understanding of how their activities affect the social purpose organisations they support and their final beneficiaries.

EVPA has come a long way in the development and harmonization of IMM across European stakeholders. Back in 2013, we developed a five-step process to measure and manage impact, which is presented in our Practical Guide to IMM. The EVPA 5-step framework has also informed the European Standard for IMM developed by the GECES (i.e. the European Commission Expert Group on Social Entrepreneurship). Building on this Practical Guide, we have developed different research and dissemination material and each year, we organise two editions of a training focused on IMM for practitioners in partnership with Social Value UK.

Additionally, as of today, more than 300 individuals have signed the Charter of Investors for Impact, developed last year by EVPA. Principle 5 of this Charter is about IMM.

Why an IMM community of practice?

We support ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute and BBK (both EVPA members) in creating an IMM Community of practice, a relatively small, invitation-only community of grant-making foundations from across Europe that seeks to improve their IMM through peer learning.

From Autumn 2020. ESADE and BBK will bring together diverse grant-making foundations with a strong interest in IMM who want to share and learn through a collaborative, collective approach through a series of webinars and group activities covering distinct IMM topics. ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute will act as the ‘co-ordinator’ providing the solid infrastructure and support team to nurture and guide the community. EVPA will be the key partner of this initiative, supporting ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute in identifying potential participants and facilitating the knowledge flow towards the IMM community. To access more information, click here.

As EVPA, we support the objectives of the Community of Practice:

• cultivating transparency, knowledge-sharing and peer exchange on the subject of IMM;
• creating a safe space where grant-making foundations can share struggles, concerns, even failures related to IMM;
• jointly moving the whole foundation sector forward through the dialogue and output of the community which will be selectively shared with a wider group of grant-making foundations and philanthropy professionals;
• facilitating collaborations between grant-making foundations in the realm of impact management.

If you are a foundation, we invite you to express your interest to be part of the community!

Please contact Leonora Buckland at leonora.buckland@esade.edu referring to this news on EVPA website.