An annual event to build a Common Framework for Assessing, Understanding and Maximizing Impact
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.
Maximizing overall impact is of critical importance. Accurate and timely Impact metrics enable funders to ensure smart and efficient use of their limited resources and to identify opportunities to improve outcomes in subsequent funding rounds. Impact metrics are also essential to ensure the sustainability and continuous improvement of successful programs and practices whose lessons and findings would be lost without clear measures of achieved impact.
Yet, there is at present no common understanding or agreement among funders, grantees or target populations about how impact is best measured, when it can and should be measured, which impact measures or measurement strategies are appropriate in different contexts, how impact data and measurement tools can most beneficially be shared, or even a common definition of the scope of outcomes implied by the word impact.
Developing a common framework for assessing, understanding, and maximizing impact is the goal for the Virtual Summit on Impact.
Virtual Summit on Impact. - 1st edition
32 speakers | 410 attendees from 57 countries | 11 hours of discussion and debate
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.
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.
| Day 1 highlights - Day 2 highlights
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.
| Day 3 highlights - Day 4 highlights