imece impact

It is a program in which a start-up’s products/services go through an evaluation process that involves impact measurement/reporting utilizing questions about the scope of generated (positive or negative) outcomes/outputs such as “for whom/what”, “how much/many”, “to what extend/size” therefore the next steps for growth get planned and the start-up gets support throughout its growth process.

We will be realizing this program with the activities that are to be carried out with different partners, the community that we have created, mentors that we partner with, and the content that we produce. During the program, we offer start-ups impact measurement and reporting, promotional content, access to a mentor network for product and business development, or technical matters plus training and workshops. We intend to introduce the required skills and the competencies to the start-ups and move their capacity and the opportunities they can find to the next level through these efforts.

Investments carried out to create positive and measurable social/environmental impact along with financial returns are defined as impact investment. As the number of investors who consider “social impact” as an important benchmark for their investments grows, and such social impact-focused financing models become more preferable, the impact investment market is expected to grow significantly.

Impact measurement and impact reporting consist of studies that allow start-ups to embody their social and environmental impact from the outcomes of their activities. It is necessary to be able to prove the impact of start-ups relying on substantial data analysis during their business development and growth phases or in their process of building relationships with potential impact investors. Hence, to be able to measure their social/environmental impact is a requirement. Impact reports are prepared by synthesizing the values and technological opportunities of the social start-ups with the arguments emerging as a result of the impact measurement.

Impact measurement and impact reporting consist of studies that allow start-ups to embody their social and environmental impact from the outcomes of their activities. It is necessary to be able to prove the impact of start-ups relying on substantial data analysis during their business development and growth phases or in their process of building relationships with potential impact investors. Hence, to be able to measure their social/environmental impact is a requirement. Impact reports are prepared by synthesizing the values and technological opportunities of the social start-ups with the arguments emerging as a result of the impact measurement.

Observing the achievements considering the impact makes the enterprise visible on a local and global scale. imece accompanies start-ups through all the steps during their problem solving and growth phases while enabling impact investors to distinguish how these start-ups offer powerful solutions for the problems that they handle and the target audiences that they reach. The reports prepared in Turkish and English allow start-ups to express themselves clearly. These reports make it all more understandable about what kind of impact and transformation these start-ups have achieved with the implemented solutions. These reports demonstrate the potential of the solved problem in Turkey and the global market. In addition to that, imece offers a narrative on the potential impact of the enterprises in the published impact reports, and points up the problems they can solve with their growth potential helping start-ups model the effects of their impact and take new steps. All of these points listed above create more access opportunities for start-ups so they can reach local and global networks during the program and after graduating from it, provide the possibility to develop various partnerships and open the doors to new collaborations. The start-ups get the chance to equip themselves for new relationships with ecosystem actors from B Corp companies to incubators of different sizes.

Impact Lab is the impact reporting support platform that the Business Call to Action Team offers to start-ups and organizations. The platform and the partnership process consists of four modules that will be analysing how your start-up serves to which of the Sustainable Development Goals, finding answers to questions such as how much, for whom, to which extent etc and the associated risks in this respect while revealing data indicators pointing up these plus beneficiary experiences. In this process, the activities, outputs and impacts of the start-up & organization will be reported through the impact value chain/impact modeling.

Evaluation and the eligibility of the applications will be based on the scope of the ideas and whether they include the sub-themes defined in the given period, how they relate to the challenges, advancement levels of the start-ups, the scale of their impact potentials, sustainability of the business and the income models, the competencies of the teams and their expertise areas and how imece can provide the most added value. After the preliminary evaluation, the remaining 8–10 initiatives hold one-on-one meetings with the Evaluation Board and during these sessions, the intention is to get to know the teams, their products or services better and to make new assessments within the frame of the criteria, and then final teams are determined accordingly. In addition to the imece team, contacts from the founding partners of imece, ATÖLYE,S360, and Zorlu Holding will be present in the Evaluation Board along with the contacts from the social entrepreneurship ecosystem.

The program will continue from November 2020 to April 2021. In this process, it will be sufficient to spare half a day a week. Attendance will be required for the mentoring sessions. Processes such as training, mentoring sessions and workshops will be customized according to the needs of your team, and the exact time you need to allocate will be determined based on that.

As of 2020, we have transformed the Support Program that we started in 2016 and developed into imece impact “impact accelerator” in 2020 to provide the needed support for the start-ups that focus on impact. With this innovative program that meets the demands and needs of the changing and developing ecosystem, we wanted to create a space for the start-ups in growth phase, a space where they can move forward by seeing their impact.

In November-January, you will need to allocate time to compile data & insights for impact reporting. This time may vary depending on the level of your organization and the data availability. The Business Call to Action team will prepare your impact report in light of the information you have gathered in February-April.

imece brings together start-ups that develop human and society focused and environmentally conscious products and services with resources such as funding, mentoring, access to local and global networks, and office facilities that aim generating social benefits throughout its Support Programs. In 3 years, 232 mentors supported 43 social start-ups with over 2000 hours of training. A total of 1 million TL grants were provided to 10 of the start-ups. In addition to imece’s own approaches and investments, the start-ups we have worked with generated a huge impact in their own sectors and accessed a wide network. Start-ups that are involved in the process but cannot qualify for the finals are kept within imece’s communication network, allowing them to collaborate to develop solution ideas.