Impact
From impact measurement to impact management
For the Achmea Foundation, creating impact is always the starting point. We focus on the target group and consciously select innovations that will have a big impact on them. This allows us to consider the long-term prospects as well.
By means of targeted investments in our partners’ social projects, we can achieve important economical and social returns. Measuring impact plays an important role in this respect. The Achmea Foundation uses impact measurements to predict and then monitor social returns.
Selecting high-impact projects
Each year the Achmea Foundation issues a Call for Proposals. When selecting initiatives, we assess the applications using a number of basic criteria. These include alignment with the needs of the target group, the financial viability of the idea as well as organisational and technological feasibility. We also assess the expected impact and innovativeness of the proposals. Preferably, impact and innovativeness should go hand in hand. Some projects need to prove themselves first. In that case, a pilot can help identify initial results and any relevant external influences.
If the initial results are promising, the pilot can be scaled up. By giving consideration not just to the pilot’s impact but also to long-term prospects, the Achmea Foundation Impact Fund can create opportunities for the right innovative projects. The project’s backers are always interviewed in person. In addition, during the selection process the Achmea Foundation has made visits to two project applicants in Africa, in order to enable it to substantiate its decision. After evaluating the 2019 Call, the Foundation has made a number of changes to the 2020 Call. For instance, a distinction has been introduced as to innovation type (does the project involve product development or scaling up?) and the application form has been simplified.
Monitoring and evaluation
The Achmea Foundation aims to be an ‘engaged donor’. Given all the knowledge and expertise in the Achmea Foundation’s network, we can offer our project partners added value in the form of positive critical feedback. This year we enhanced our monitoring and evaluation by asking an external party (Gupta Strategists) to assess four projects. The assessment zoomed in on the so-called ‘must wins’: which factors are essential to ensure a successful outcome? This allows interim adjustments to be made to the project. For all projects we measure results and monitor progress in terms of SMART objectives. This monitoring and evaluation is based on the assumptions of creating impact and learning from new insights. The interim evaluations focus therefore on current data and lessons learned, rather than the project plan. These insights form the basis for the subsequent phases of the project.
SROI and DROI
The Social Return On Investment (SROI) focuses on the social return. This means that we not only look at the economic return, but rather the impact on the target group. SROI reflects a financial value of the measured social impact and results.
The Achmea Foundation supports initiatives with financial contributions and with non-financial support (NFS), such as expertise and access to our network. Each contribution in this respect is an investment that represents a certain value. The impact of this investment can be translated into relevant outcomes. The aim is to achieve the biggest possible impact for each euro invested. With our SROI methodology, we aim to make the returns of the Impact Fund measurable. However, the SROI methodology is not suitable for projects aimed at improving people’s health. Instead, where possible we express the expected impact of such projects in terms of DALY Return on Investment (DROI), the expected number of years of life gained.
At present the number of projects for which we can calculate a DROI is small because the Achmea Foundation invests mainly in projects that generate only a small impact during their lifetime, but can be scaled up to produce bigger health impacts after the test phase. The exact impact of a project therefore cannot always be defined in advance. It is not possible to quantify every project and every social impact. That is why, in addition to SROI and DROI calculations, we also produce qualitative analyses of our projects’ progress and results. In recent years we have reported on the SROI of our project portfolio. In 2019, however, it became clear that the number of projects for which this standard gave a sufficient picture was steadily declining. On the one hand, this is because initiatives are becoming more innovative, requiring more assumptions to be made in the calculations, which reduces the reliability of their outcomes. On the other hand, our portfolio includes an increasing proportion of healthcare projects, which means that an SROI calculation for the whole portfolio is no longer relevant.
Volunteer policy
Since the Foundation does not work directly with volunteers, it has not defined a special policy for this purpose. Volunteers can of course participate in the projects financed by the Foundation. Through the employee platform Voor Elkaar, Achmea employees are also encouraged to make a social contribution.