The Month of Societal Impact
by Hedwig Siewertsen

The term societal impact has received intensive attention in May within d.o.b foundation. What have we learnt and what should be done better?

Early May the ‘Convergences 2015’ conference was held in Paris and towards the end of May, many gathered at the SOCAP conference in Amsterdam. At both conferences, I spoke on behalf of d.o.b foundation. In Paris, the topic was implementation of societal impact measurement in our organization. During several SOCAP workshops, societal impact was an important theme as well.

Why Measure?

My conclusion from both conferences is that the different views on the practical aspects of implementation (who pays the impact measurement? Who does research? How much can it cost? etc.) ultimately boil down to the Why of impact measurement. Do you measure impact to improve your own work? Or do you measure to prove that you're doing the right thing? Or put differently: does one use impact measurement to 'improve' or to 'proof?
As d.o.b foundation we always want to do better in terms of societal impact. We analyze the expected impact with the help of the "social e-valuator" and then we make the investments that yield the highest societal impact beyond financial return. Because that is the right of existence of d.o.b foundation: no social return, no d.o.b foundation. This also implies that the cost of impact measurement should be an integral part of our investment. As a company and as an investor you cannot claim that societal impact is core to your business without feeling responsible for its measurement.

How to Measure?

That was the theory. And then we had our Partner Days on 25 and 26 May. During these days, we partnered with the managers and co-investors of our (future) investments; we discussed the ways we measure societal impact and we exchanged our mutual expectations. Do we only measure the number of LED lights sold or the number of schools built or are we also investigating whether and how the lives of the end users have improved? In our individual action plans, d.o.b foundation and our (potential) investee companies have defined concrete social performance indicators to follow, that will help to further realize the societal impact of our investments. We will keep you updated on this practice in the coming years.

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