Social Impact Measurement Tools for Young Social Entrepreneurs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Impact Measurement Tools for Young Social Entrepreneurs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The Know Your Impact: Social Impact Management Tools for Young Social Entrepreneurs programme has been developed and implemented between the years 2015 and 2017 by four organizations: Koç University Social Impact Forum, Estonian Social Enterprise Network, Social Value UK and Mikado Sustainable Development Consulting. All partnering organizations are committed to developing the social entrepreneurship and increasing the social value through social impact management.
Overall objective of this project was strengthening social entrepreneurship as a sustainable and reliable model to solve social problems.
Our specific objective was equipping young social entrepreneurs to become more impactful through improving their capacity on social impact analysis.
Our strategy was to create an awareness among social entrepreneurs and ecosystem developers, to increase access to knowledge by developing materials in native languages, and to increase skills of social entrepreneurs by providing training and coaching program.
Our target group was young start-up social entrepreneurs. Many social entrepreneurship leaders are young and even though they are inspired, they are not much experienced in defining and measuring societal objectives, which results less public benefit, less public support and less funding.
The project background:
Young start-up social entrepreneurs have much potential and energy, but no experience. Without guidance, the risk to fail is high. In addition, start- up social entrepreneurs are focused on their business models and getting funding rather than tracking their social impact. That is why, with the Know Your Impact programme we aimed to establish necessary mechanism to support these young social entrepreneurs.
The Europe 2020 strategy recognizes entrepreneurship and self-employment as key for achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In its support to entrepreneurship and self-employment, the EC focuses its efforts on business start-ups by unemployed and people from disadvantaged groups, sustainability and quality of work of self-employed businesses and micro-entrepreneurs; and support for social entrepreneurs. According to the Eurostat, youth unemployment rate is 23.4 % in the Euro Area. The concept of social entrepreneurship might be an alternative way to strengthen the situation of young people in the EU.
The project consisted of three consecutive parts:
-research and needs analysis (August 2015 – March 2016). Team conduct a comprehensive and complementary research on needs analysis among social entrepreneurs and ecosystem developers in Estonia and in Turkey through workshops.The findings were evaluated and published in Needs Analysis Report. The data insights and findings were used in the next stages of the project helping to develop the content, tools and services according to the needs of the direct beneficiary group.
-In a second phase – March 2016 to September 2017 – the project team developed the Impact Thinking Framework, that became the frame for developing methodology, the training content and the Maximise Your Impact: A guide for social entrepreneur. The training organized in Istanbul/Turkey between the 19th and 24th of August 2016. On the basis of the developed Impact Thinking methodology, training content and benefiting from the coaching experiences the Maximise Your Impact: A guide for social entrepreneur was developed between the September 2016 and September 2017.
-The third phase of the project (September 2016 – September 2017) was dedicated to one-to-one coaching of the training program participants, developing the best practices on social impact analysis and disseminating the developed methodology. The dissemination included two conferences (in Turkey and in Estonia).
The results on participants:
-Increased awareness of the benefits of social impact analysis among ecosystem developers, social entrepreneurs and social investors
-Increased skills of young start-up social entrepreneurs on social impact analysis
-Increased training and coaching capacity on social impact analysis of programme partners.
-Increased access to knowledge on social impact analysis among ecosystem developers, social entrepreneurs and social investors.
Impact of the project
-The partner organizations empowered and equipped with the systematic approach to deliver to the social enterprises
-Awareness raised on the importance of the social impact management among social entrepreneurs and ecosystem developers
-The Needs Analysis Report provided the information on the areas that needs to be addressed in order to develop further the immature social entrepreneurship sector in Turkey. On the basis of the research two projects were developed and are currently being implemented.
-Increasing the interest towards the social impact management and social entrepreneurship
-The international cooperation and know-how transfer strengthen
– Online free tools and guidelines accessible

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 254891,78 Eur

Project Coordinator

Koç University & Country: TR

Project Partners

• SOCIAL VALUE NETWORK UK
• MTÜ Sotsiaalsete Ettevõtete Võrgustik
• Mikado Danismanlik Hizmetleri Ltd. Sti.