Sinzer news

Sinzer's Impact Standards - a free tool to search for relevant indicators linked to the SDGs - have undergone certification through the GRI Certified Software and Tools Program.The means that GRI confirms that the content from the GRI Standards is being used accurately in this software or digital tool. Sinzer cannot guarantee that the use of the software or tool will result in producing a sustainablility report that can be classified as a GRI Standards report.The complete GRI Standards have to be considered in order to ensure that the report will qualify as a GRI Standards report.

Social Value International review digital products and software and provide accreditation if there is alignment with the Social Value Principles. We are very happy to announce that Social Value International has recertified our software for the next two years meeting the stringent criteria against the Social Value Principles. They state: "Sinzer, one of Social Value International’s most longstanding members, provides a solution for social impact management that allows organizations to treat social impact management as seriously as financial management".

The demo gives you a 23-min walkthrough of how to work with surveys to gather data for your SROI analysis. We support a range of different research methods such as

• collect prospective data with your target audience to underpin your SROI forecast
• collect retrospective data to do a project evaluation
• collect and automatically calculate the difference between two measurements for each individual: one before and one after your project
• surveying only a sample of your participants or surveying all of them

The SROI framework is built specifically to support your Social Return On Investment analysis and is currently the only tool accredited by ‘Social Value International’. It facilitates an established method that applies ‘social accounting principles’ such as attribution, drop-off and displacement effects. An SROI analysis helps you to forecast your social impact as well as to monitor and evaluate it by involving your stakeholders via the survey tool.  

Interested in learning more on SROI? You can download our Beginners Guide and/or Step 2 Step Guide or follow the SROI Practitioner training which we organise together with Social Value International on 12/13 September 2017 in Amsterdam. More info you can find here. 

If you wish to get a live demo of our product (via Skype) in which we can also demonstrate other impact management frameworks, you can register here.

Last week Amsterdam's Westerpark hosted the annual 'Next Web conference', of which this year's edition featured a special program for 'impact start-ups'. The aim of this program was to shine a spotlight on entrepreneurs and startups that are taking on the world’s most difficult challenges.

For many social enterprises and charities, navigating the complex world of finding and securing social investment can be quite challenging. The recently launched Good FInance aims to bridge that gap, by improving access to information on social investment for charities and social enterprises. Their objectives are:

Europeana Foundation weaves together thousands of cultural heritage and technology professionals and organisations from across Europa who are all committed to the vision of transforming the world with culture. The Foundation has a network of data partners: over 3,700 institutions and aggregators provide cultural heritage collections for publications on Europeana. In addition, there are many EU-funded projects that contribute to, improve or use the Europeana services. It is Europeana’s job to coordinate activities, connecting projects and people working in the same areas and ensuring that their focus and work is in sync. The Foundation also advocates changes and policies aimed at fostering a strong digital cultural sector for Europe, and develops and maintains the technical infrastructure that underpins this. Part of Europeana’s strategy to promote and support digital cultural heritage, is the launch of three websites which focus on digital cultural heritage of photography, fashion and research.

With the aim of supporting the Foundation’s impact strategy until 2020, a special taskforce within Europeana started developing the Europeana Impact Framework in 2016. This framework consists of five ‘lenses’: 1) Utility 2) Community 3) Education 4) Existence 5) Legacy, each linked to an expected impact:

• Socially, by contributing to a sense of shared identity across Europe; of connectedness through culture;
• Economically, by reducing costs for cultural institutions or by enabling new and creative business;
• Innovatively, by making the network of cultural institutions stronger, more innovative and better equipped to handle challenges of the digital future.

The draft framework has recently been tested on a long-running service “Europeana 1914-1918”, which had the following objectives: 1) to explore the social and cultural impact of this service and 2) to use learnings from the test in order to transform the framework into an impact assessment tool for Europeana and its partners. 

Consultants of Sinzer will critically assess and possibly re-define (parts of) Europeana's current framework, as well as test the Impact Framework by using it to measure the impact of the three websites (photography, fashion and research). Besides fine tuning the impact framework, this test is also geared towards understanding the actual impact delivered through the websites for multiple stakeholders, in order to use these findings to continuously improve and maximize the impact delivered.

Wanna know more about our work?

Learn more about the Sinzer software and how to use Social Return on Invesment (SROI) framework by watching this up to date free demo.

Gemeente Utrecht vervult op gebied van stimuleren van sociaal ondernemerschap in Nederland een voorlopers rol. Onder andere via haar inkoopbeleid geeft gemeente Utrecht een stimulans aan sociaal ondernemerschap. Zo zijn leveranciers die zaken doen met de gemeente doorgaans verplicht 5% aan ‘social return’ te besteden bij aanbestedingen boven een ton. Daarmee hielp gemeente Utrecht in 2015 627 mensen met een afstand tot de arbeidsmarkt aan werk. Omdat het creëren van maatschappelijke meerwaarde echter breder is dan arbeidsparticipatie, is gemeente Utrecht momenteel bezig de invulling van het social return beleid breder te trekken. Zo wil Utrecht leveranciers, andere gemeenten en sociaal ondernemers ook inspireren om sociaal ondernemen in te zetten voor het stimuleren van sociale inclusie, duurzaamheid en andere maatschappelijk relevante thema’s.

We have recently launched an online support center, where you can find several tutorials, advice and FAQs on how to use Sinzer. Besides instructions on how to use SROI, you can find information about how to use our flexible Strategic Impact Framework. Go check it out!