Our methodology
#MEET4IMPACT aims to provide organizations with more formal tools, methodologies and frameworks designed to truly understand the impact they create through their activities and events and further amplify that impact. We will empower organizations and destinations to generate, measure and communicate the social impact of their events. To measure social impact, we use “impact” as a currency by which the organisation will be able to report on its organizational effectiveness in carrying out its mission, in a similar way that one would report on financial results.
Our methodology is inspired by other international management frameworks such as “Results-based management”. It consists of four steps, which will be fully supported by our team:
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Step 1: Define
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Step 2: Manage
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Step 3: Measure
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Step 4: Maximise
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It aims to leverage existing initiatives and partial solutions to measuring impact, which means that we will create bridges with the other major projects for measuring or communicating the impact of business events currently underway. We propose a taxonomy of ten areas of impact that the participating projects can select indicators from, to help them define the impact they would like to achieve. Those areas are:
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Innovation
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Business opportunities
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Employment and capacity building
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Networks and collaboration
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Investments
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Reputation and brand profile
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Knowledge and research
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Community well-being
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Regulatory
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Environment
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Indicators from existing global impact frameworks and calculators (such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Social Return on Investment (SROI), Event canvas, Event Impact Calculator, etc.) will be built in and distributed in these areas of focus.
We also propose a pathway for tying into the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and support our destinations and associations in identifying how their activity is supporting the progress of the SDGs. We hope to propose this as a viable contribution to a roadmap on how the Business Events industry is contributing globally to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. You can learn more about our work with the SDGs here.
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"Through the #Meet4Impact initiative, we aim to empower our partners to consider impact as an end-to-end process which can be purpose- fully created, managed, captured, and communicated for value. This means supporting them throughout their journey from the initial impact goal setting to the identification of which stakeholders can assist with this goal; to making sure it fulfills the business objectives of enhancing its value proposition to funders and members; to determining what it should be measuring and how to do it; to providing the know-how and tools to register this and track it; to analysing the data collected and how to communicate it; to finally leveraging this data and knowledge to ultimately get greater clarity on how it should improve its programme and service delivery. "
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-Geneviève Leclerc, President and CEO
