3S Conference: Building bridges to manage for impact

3S: Manage for Impact Conference, organised by TIIME and Stone Soup Consulting, unites the European social sector on the road for impact management

October 1st, 2018. More than 150 participants from 18 countries representing foundations, social purpose organisations, impact investors, academia and service providers have joined 3S: Manage for Impact, the first event of the Stone Soup Series co-organized with TIIME, at ESADE Business School in Barcelona.  

The aim of this learning and networking event was to help scale and maximize the social impact of organisations by moving the conversation forward from measuring to managing impact. During their opening conversation, Sophie Robin (Stone Soup Consulting) and Hedda Pahlson-Moller (TIIME) spoked notably about the organising team’s motivations for the event: the need to open silos up, bring communities together and work for collaborative innovation, (among others).

According to Jeremy Nicholls, Keynote speaker at the conference and board member of Social Value International, “if all you are going to do is to measure your impact, then don’t bother. It’s not enough”.

During the event, Ulrich Grabenwarter, Deputy Director of the European Investment Fund, reminded impact investors the importance of defining their own Theory of Change and managing their impact, not just their returns.

On her side Sabina Lobato, director of the Grants, Training and Employment Programme of Fundación ONCE, also underlined one of the recurrent themes at the conference: the responsibility to include beneficiaries in the decision making process and enabling them to hold investors and funders accountable.

In addition, trainers such as Ben Carpenter from Social Value UK reinforced the need to find common denominators of what impact management entails to the different actors involved.

The first 3S Conference has also held 40 Discussion Tables dedicated to impact management from the Education, Culture, Diversity, Environment, Impact Investing or Health perspectives, among others. Participants have shared their common experience overcoming barriers when managing impact such as access to data, how it is collected or used to improve the impact cycle. In addition, the importance of precise and focused data as an essential tool for impact driven decissions has been one of the main subjects of discussion.

Diversity was also a transversal aspect of this event that counted on the participation of local social enterprises and organisations working for inclusion such as Apunts, Hidden City Tours, Abrazo Cultural or Mescladís Restaurant.

Manage for Impact Conference, organised in partnership by Stone Soup Consulting and TIIME, took place on September 27th & 28th at ESADE Barcelona. It has been a dynamic and inclusive event focused on learning and exchanging best practices in impact management and able to connect, for the first time at a European level, all the social actors in the public, private and non-profit sectors.