Impact Orange Partners organised a seminar ‘Navigating the Impact Landscape’ on 13 April. Central to the seminar were the themes: ‘Partnerships for Impact’, and ‘The Impact Value Chain’.

Due to the many innovations in areas such as: impact data management, measurement and monitoring; portfolio construction and selections; impact creation in the real world and impact optimisation, some navigation was required. The speakers acted as knowledgeable helmsmen in this regard.

Hereby, we would like to offer you some learning and reflection points following this seminar, starting in a visual way:

All speakers agreed that there is ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ capital. Anyone with capital that serves a long-term purpose should use at least a substantial part of it to address social issues. Besides the idea that – naturally – returns should be made.

This process should have a structured approach, according to the so-called Theory of Change: What is the social issue? Is my capital going to make a difference? What do we want to achieve? How are we going to measure returns and impact? Over what timescale are we going to measure and monitor the difference we make? In other words, the dimensions: Intention, Additional and Measurable should be clearly visible.

Speakers also argued, that it is often difficult to generate impact individually, and thus need to do so mainly together with partners. The more stones in the pond, the bigger the – positive – impact stain… In line with SDG 17 Partnership to achieve goals.

Adding a personal note to the afternoon: there are people who are ‘on the barricades for impact’ from a social context; there are also people who want to make a trade-off between return, risk and impact purely from an investment context; there are people who want to create more impact from a ‘scale and efficiency’ point of view, thus bridging the gap between institutional demand and (impact) product; there are also people who do impact from purely personal motives. A great afternoon with lots of passion and promising initiatives; and so it was!