Activity
overview
Three years of The Impact Initiative were full of research, testing, connection and delivery. Here’s an overview of what was achieved throughout the programme.
Since launching in May 2018, The Impact Initiative has undertaken a huge amount of activity focussed on establishing a more robust understanding of the needs present in New Zealand’s social enterprise landscape. Our goal was to look at what barriers exist for social enterprises in New Zealand, and determine how those barriers could be reduced – both during the programme itself and afterwards, through future Government support.
Three years of programme activity and insights culminated in the recommendations to the Government, outlined in A Roadmap for Impact, released in April 2021.
Check out the insights reports in the publications section for a quarter by quarter breakdown on what we’ve been up to since 2018, or take a look at the A3 summaries below to get a high-level sense of what activity was undertaken year by year.
Programme Activity A3 Summaries
Summary booklet
THE IMPACT INITIATIVE SUMMARY BOOKLET PROVIDES SOME INFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, PROGRAMME ACHIEVEMENTS, AND an overview of the RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT. The full recommendations report is here.
Programme Highlights
Research and reporting
Published milestone report The Business of Impact, which looks at how social enterprises are contributing to Government priorities.
Commissioned and published significant research into the capital needs of social enterprises, legal structures for social enterprises and the history of the sector.
Undertook investigations into ‘macro trends’ for social enterprise, including the demand for mentoring support and examining the needs of Māori and youth.
Engaging with the social enterprise sector
Undertook a comprehensive environment scan and a range of sector engagement activity, including 21 ‘kitchen table talk’ events held in communities across the country.
Held 13 regional hui to look into the needs of Māori enterprise or pakihi whai kaupapa (business that pursues purpose).
Established a social enterprise Sector Working Group to represent the needs of the wider community, Māori and social enterprise sectors.
Represented New Zealand social enterprise at the 2018 World Forum in Edinburgh (SEWF), held the Aotearoa Social Enterprise Forum in 2018, and enabled access to SEWF online through Aotearoa Conversations in 2020.
Engaging with government agencies and officials
Established a Cross-Agency Advisory Group including members from multiple government agencies to advocate for social enterprise and impact across government.
Ran workshops on impact and social procurement with government officials to help build awareness and understanding of social enterprise and impact in key government agencies.
Participating the 2019 Government Innovation Showcase to put the spotlight on social enterprise suppliers and social procurement with officials from across government.
Developing the impact investing market
Supported the management of impact investment activity through New Zealand’s first impact investment fund The Impact Enterprise Fund.
The Impact Initiative supported the management of two rounds of The Impact Investment Readiness Programme, which provides support to enterprises in need of development to get ready to seek impact investment.
Progressing social procurement
We launched fwd:, New Zealand’s first Social Procurement Marketplace, involving the certification of more than 100 social enterprise suppliers and the formation of a buyer group that includes some of New Zealand’s largest companies and a procurement spend of over $20 billion.
Advocacy for the inclusion of social enterprise in the Government Procurement Rules that came into force from 1 October 2019.
Building capability to achieve impact
Testing a nationally connected network of social enterprise support organisations through the Hubs Pilot programme.
Testing the delivery of online capability building through a pilot of a New Zealand instance of the Social Shifters capability building platform.
Developing a suite of tools and resources to support the establishment and running of social enterprises and impact-led businesses.
