Rewatch the Virtual Summit on Impact

Building a Common Framework for Assessing, Understanding and Maximizing Impact

The first edition of the Virtual Summit on Impact, organized by the FMSH, in partnership with the European Foundation Centre (EFC), and took place between the 16 and 19 of November 2020. It brought together 32 speakers and 410 attendees from 57 countries for 11 hours of discussion and debate.

There is a rapidly growing gap between pressing public needs and available resources. Forward-thinking philanthropies, governments, and other organisations that invest to achieve targeted education, economic, and social outcomes are continuously improving the methods they use to predict and measure the real-world impact of programmes they fund. Focusing on impact achieved is a necessary step to ensure limited resources are used in smart and efficient ways and to identify opportunities to improve outcomes.

What is the best way to measure the impact of a programme or project? How and when is impact best measured? What are the best practices? What is the impact of different measurement strategies themselves? What measurement tools are available? Can new applications of technology improve impact measurement? The Virtual Summit on Impact sought to answer impact issues and to build a common framework for assessing, understanding and maximizing impact.

Watch & listen to our expert speakers with the video recordings of the 8 sessions now up on the Virtual Summit on Impact website:

Watch the video recordings of the Summit

The first two days of the Summit were dedicated to the launch event of the European Funders for Impact (EFI), a joint initiative by the EFC and the FMSH, gathering like-minded philanthropic representatives to explore ways in which new forms of collaboration designed to increase overall impact can be considered, evaluated, pilot-tested, showcased, and replicated.

The third and fourth day of the Summit, organized by the FMSH, were dedicated to the measurement of impact in research activity. The participants seeked to design long-term strategies to promote impactful research on pressing global challenges.

Hal Plotkin | Leadership styles matter: The key finding for grantmakers and grantees from the Virtual Summit on Impact

Emmanuel Kattan | Restoring Trust, Delivering Impact

Lisa Petrides | FMSH Partners with ISKME to Provide Social Impact Services

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