In a new Innovation Coffee, in which 11 Catalan and Basque member organizations took part.

Yesterday, May 31st, the iSocial member organizations held a new Innovation Coffee, in virtual format, this time dedicated to reflecting on the systems for measuring social impact. Professionals from 11 organizations, 9 Catalan and 2 Basque, took part.

After a welcome from the president, Montse Cervera, an interesting dialogue took place with 4 member entities that in recent years have measured their impact on people and society with different methodologies: Ampans Foundation, Educational Platform, Foundation Sant Pere Claver and Fundació Support-Girona. On behalf of Ampans, Jordi Mir spoke, giving his point of view on the methodology Integrated Social Value Methodology – VSI that this foundation has been using for six years. On the part of Plataforma Educativa, Sonsoles Garcia spoke about the MasBusiness company, which explained the ONLBG methodology. Speaking on behalf of the Sant Pere Claver Group, Raul Alcazar spoke about his experience in using the SROI methodology. And Josep Maria Solé spoke on behalf of Support-Girona, also in relation to the use of the SROI system.

The dialogue between the four speakers and the subsequent debate with the other participating professionals, about twenty, were led and masterfully facilitated by Carmen Castrejon of Plataforma Educativa.

As a next step, the iSocial Foundation will draw up a comparative document on the various methodologies for measuring social impact, which will allow member organizations to make progress in tackling this challenge.

Measuring social impact is a useful action to learn and improve management. It facilitates decision making. And it gives legitimacy to the entity in front of the agents involved and in front of the community where it is inserted.

However, it is a complex task, both because of the important qualitative component of the methodologies and because of the difficulty of dedicating resources to this activity.

The desirability of measuring the impact, the diversity of existing methodologies and the difficulty of the task led the iSocial Foundation to choose this topic of discussion for Innovation Cafés with member entities.