We are at the verge of wiping out polio, thanks to a  €1.1 billion financing package from the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation! This new partnership finances not only polio vaccinations for nearly 370 million children annually. It is also set for providing other critical immunisations and strengthening health systems in countries where needed.

We at VfG are extremely proud to have supported the development of this partnership. We helped facilitate the exchange between the partners and identify potential opportunities to scale up investments. We are happy to know that money will flow towards health innovation and access including vaccine manufacturing capabilities and technology transfer in countries that need it.

The winner of the Tech for Good Award from Stage Two, the largest pan-European startup competition,  has been announced 🏆 

As sponsors of this award, we are delighted to equip the visionary entrepreneurs with customised impact coaching and mentoring. This time we will work side by side with the team of socialbnb.

Socialbnb is the sustainable booking platform for mindful travellers. 85% of the accommodation fee directly finances projects with social and/or ecological impact - projects by locals for locals.

Congratulations to socialbnb!

It is always a pleasure to support our network and share our impact knowledge.

In May, our project manager Theresa Hannes was invited to give a lunchtime virtual talk at the Competence Network for Equal Opportunities to introduce the topic of impact management and shared her experiences with the SchlaU-Werkstatt für Migrationspädagogik gGmbH team during the VfG Impact Academy 2022. 

Theresa accompanied the team, led by Anja Kittlitz and Nina Hille, for almost a year as a coach on their impact journey. 

SchlaU-Werkstatt für Migrationspädagogik gGmbH, who work for more educational justice in the migration society, participated in VfG's Impact Academy 2022, in which VfG works with the participating social organisations and foundations to further develop their impact management.

During the exchange, exciting and sometimes unusual topics were discussed - including the question of what impact management has to do with a washing machine programme :-)

In April, the beta version of the Data to Policy Navigator was launched at the United Nations World Data Forum in Hangzhou, China. We are pleased to have supported the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in the development of this important Tech4Good tool. The main goal of the Navigator: to help policymakers with comprehensive recommendations for action on data-driven decisions. With content based on more than 15 interviews with potential users from over 13 countries and many conversations with experts in the field, the Navigator brings together use cases from around the world and provides practical guidance no matter where policy makers are on their journey to data-driven policy decisions. 

It was exciting to see our work in practice, especially as we believe that the Tech4Good initiative will have an important impact on advancing data-driven policymaking worldwide.

We are excited to share some key takeaways from the kick-off event with you (our first on-site kick-off event!), which opened our longest Impact Academy to date (15 months!). Over two days, we welcomed participants from 10 organisations to Berlin. The participants had the opportunity to gain initial insights into the Impact Academy’s content.

We have collected a few highlights from the two days for you: 

• The exchange among the participating organisations was particularly well-received, as they found many points for connection, despite their diverse and different approaches. 
• The virtual alumni visit was a highlight, as participants were able to learn from the experience of previous cohorts. Many thanks to Nina Hille from SchlaU-Werkstatt für Migrationspädagogik gGmbH, Christian Werner from RheinFlanke and Werner Detering from Hacker School!
• The chance to have first conversations with coaches increased excitement for the participants and made the tasks ahead a bit more tangible.

A big thank you to:

• All organisations for the their time, energy, and willingness to rethink impact: Aktion Zivilcourage e. V. , AMANDLA Social Enterprises, Digitale Gesellschaft, Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung GmbH Thüringen, Dachverband Schweizer Jugendparlamente DSJ, FACK, Lernende Region Netzwerk Köln e.V., MigraNetz Thüringen e.V., proTechnicale and Initiative Schule Im Aufbruch.
• Our funding partners, without whom the Impact Academy 2023 would not be possible: aqtivator, Beisheim Stiftung Deutschland, Eleven e.V., Kinnings Foundation, Mercator Foundation Switzerland, The Human Safety Net and the Value for Good Foundation.

We are excited to start the impact journey together! 

GENUI publishes its ESG Report 2022 | April 2023

VfG was pleased to support GENUI again this year in preparing its ESG report. This report highlights, from our perspective, GENUI's commitment to transitioning to a more sustainable future and demonstrates the positive impact of its portfolio companies on society. 

We would like to thank the entire GENUI team for their commitment to producing this report over the past few months. We are proud to have worked closely with the GENUI team to produce this comprehensive report and are ever grateful to support our clients on their journey towards transparent and thorough ESG reporting.

We are excited that Carolin Turbahn and Saskia Baer were selected to join the Dela Programme as thought-partners to empower social entrepreneurs and their organisations to enhance their systems change strategies and scale their social impact.

• Carolin will be volunteering with Thorkil Sonne and the Specialisterne Foundation to create a million jobs for autistic and neurodivergent people.
• Saskia's time will be spent with Uygar Özesmi and Good4Trust.org, which is building an ecosystem of ecologically and socially fair goods and services based on goodness and trust.

Dela is a global accelerator programme co-created by Ashoka and IKEASocialEntrepreneurship. Ashoka is the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs and changemakers. Ashoka Fellows address system-changing innovations to solve deep-rooted social problems.

The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG) has been in force since 1 January 2023. Under this new law 3,000 companies in Germany are subject to new due diligence requirements aimed at minimising risks to people and the environment in global supply chains.

We have researched what exactly the LkSG means for companies: 

• What is the LkSG, who does it affect, and what obligations does it impose?
• What human rights and environmental risks does the LkSG cover?
• How and by whom is the LkSG implemented?
• What does reporting on the LkSG look like for companies?
• What are the expected impacts of the LkSG?

This is a year that has come with many challenges, from the ongoing pandemic to war and conflict near and far. In the face of these difficult times, we want to use this time at the end of the year to reflect on what we are grateful for. At Value for Good there is so much we can be grateful for, especially: 

 🚀 exciting projects and topics we were able to work on to promote more impact, 

 👩💻 trusting and appreciative client relationships that we were able to build and deepen, 

 🤩 a motivating, empathetic and inspiring team that is great fun to work with, 

 🌠 regular self-reflection and feedback sessions that help us grow both as an organisation and as individuals. 

With these thoughts in mind, we look forward to what the coming year has in store for us and are excited to share our impact(ful) news with you. 

The entire VfG team wishes a relaxing holiday season and a successful, healthy and even more sustainable 2023!

In November we had the pleasure of celebrating the closing of our 5th Impact Academy. The nine participating organisations met in Berlin after almost a year of intensive focus on their impact. Throughout the year they worked through the content of our Impact Academy learning platform, Miro-boards and podcasts as well as exchanged ideas in regular coaching sessions and online formats.

It was very inspiring

• to see how excited, confident and proud the organisations were to report on their considerable impact management development and successes over the last year;

• to witness how impact will continue to play a central role for them in the future; and

• to observe how great the willingness is to exchange ideas and support each other even beyond their time in the Impact Academy.

A big thank you to all the participating organisations - Discuss it, Katholische Familienbildungsstätte Hannover, Freunde Alter Menschen E.V., Internationale Bodensee-Hochschule IBH, Stiftung Risiko-Dialog, SchlaU-Werkstatt für Migrationspädagogik gGmbH, Social Impact gGmbH, Verband Deutscher Naturparke E.V. and ZuBaKa gGmbH - for dedicating their time and energy and continuing showing their willingness to rethink impact. Thank you as well to our supporting partners without whom the Impact Academy 2022 would not have been possible: aqtivator (Sarah Ulrich, Nikolaus Reusch), Beisheim Stiftung Deutschland (Alisa Wieland), Eleven (Ute Volz), Stiftung Mercator Schweiz (Stefan Brunner) and The Human Safety Net (Patrick Hoffmann).

We wish the participants all the best for their ongoing impact journey!

This autumn's team training focused on Anti-Racism and White Allyship, especially in the work context. The purpose of this training was to educate ourselves and critically reflect our own positions, especially given that our team is of predominantly White, European backgrounds. 📣 We are very grateful to Dr. Jule Bönkost for leading us through this important work. Dr. Bönkost co-founded the Institut für diskriminierungsfreie Bildung (Institute for education without discrimination) and now works as an independent trainer for Diskriminierungskritische Bildung (Discrimination-critical education). 

Some key take-aways we want to share: 

➡ Discrimination evolves through a combination of prejudices and power

 and can take place at the individual, institutional and structural level; 

➡ You can have the right intention and still behave in a racist manner: it is not the intention of an action, but rather its effects that determine whether it is discriminatory; 

➡ It is the responsibility of people with power (e.g. White people in our society) to inform themselves independently about the topics of racism, critical whiteness and allyship. This can be done through leveraging the broad range of available resources; and 

➡Learning more about intersectionality is important, as racism is only one form of many discriminations, including, for example, sexism, ableism and classism. 

How this training will impact our operations moving forward. We will... 

✔ Continue to de-bias our recruiting system and focus on building a diverse team, e.g. leveraging the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency's guidelines to anti-discriminatory hiring practices;

✔ Establish processes and guidelines for dealing with racist behavior within our work context; and 

✔ Educate ourselves independently through resources and regular exchange.

In October we had the chance to see the best European university startups pitching live in Berlin at Stage Two – the largest pan-European start-up competition.

Value for Good had the unique task to select an impact startup for the Tech for Good Skilling Award.

We are very happy to have awarded the prize to Manuscrito App - an EdTech startup that enables children aged 4 to 8 to learn basic writing, reading and math skills with its interactive and multidisciplinary solution based on artificial intelligence. Our Tech for Good Skilling Award grants winners a customized VfG impact coaching and mentoring program, as well as impact, mentoring, and network building support. We look forward to working together and making a difference! 

We are beyond excited to #jointhetribe and partner with Stage Two, the first pan-European competition for the best start-ups coming out of leading European universities. From 20-21 October 2022, 40+ start-ups from 40+ universities and 20+ countries will pitch their visionary ideas at #radialsystem in Berlin. We have the pleasure to award one start-up with the Tech for Good Skilling Award, providing customised impact coaching to the winning team. 🚀

We are looking forward to the two days full of inspiration, exchange, discussion and awesome pitches!

At VfG we believe that 🌟 New Year's Eve 🌟 is not the only time to reflect on where we have been and where we are going.... We are excited to announce that our 2021 Annual Report is now available on our website!

In 2021 we are particularly happy to report that we… 

📈 displayed 57% year-on-year growth in revenue

😀 expanded our tam by 45% (welcome to the team, everyone!) 

💡 founded the Value for Good Foundation, which is now the sole owner of VfG 

💸 deepened our expertise in Tech for Good and Finance for Impact 

🚀 launched the 4th VfG Impact Academy 

The key takeaway from all of these developments is that we started 2022 knowing that we were even better positiones to keep impact at the heart of our organization. 

This is a question that two of our consultants, Alena Klatte and Carolin Turbahn shared insights and practical examples on during their interactive webinar end of June for the betterplace academy, a free online learning platform for social organizations on digital topics.

Despite the high temperatures, participants from a variety of social organizations took part in the webinar to learn more about why the communication of impact data matters and what to pay attention to when communicating it.

Some key advice in brief:

Successful communication of impact data should …

> Connect to your organization's theory of change

> Match your communication objectives

> Be tailored to your target group

> Contain clear and honest messages

> Be presented in a fitting and comprehensible way

What do you consider important in communicating impact data?

"This was one of the key topics at the UPJ conference - one of the most important CSR and Corporate Citizenship events in Germany that our VfG consultants Carolin Turbahn and Marcel-Valentin Glockner participated in end of June in #berlin."

The conference presented a unique opportunity for Sustainability/ C(S)R / Corporate Citizenship experts and representatives from all sectors and various industries to meet again in person and exchange views around "Sustainable transformation in uncertain times.

The enganging debates and discussions during the event focused on different topics such as the normative and social dimensions within the CSR concept, sustainability reporting standards, competency-based employee engagement, social cohesion in times of crises, and the tension between safe and sustainable supply chains.

In addition, the list of inspiring speakers included (- and acknowledging that there were many more-) Rania Al-Khatib, Senior Expert Corporate Citizenship at Deutsche Post DHL Group, Georg Kell, founder of the UN Global Compact, Prof. Dr. THomas Beschorner, professor at the University of St. Gallen and Gabriele Hartmann, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility Middle and Eastern Europe at SAP.

We would like to thank the UPJ network for organising this highly informative and encouraging event! It was great to see so many people and organisations united in their efforts to make our economy and society more sustainable - despite the many challenges that all of them face.

We at VfG take away energy and motivation to drive sustainability further with and for our clients - until next year UPJ!

Would you like to join our unique and fun team and advise leading organisations on “doing good better”? Are you passionate about dealing with societal challenges in your day-to-day work? 

We are continuously looking for additions to our impact-driven team across all levels. At the moment, we are particularly seeking Project Leaders and Principals, ideally individuals with a combination of consulting and sustainability/social impact experience. We would love to hear from you or someone in your network. 

GENUI, a Hamburg-based private equity fund, continues to lead the way in promoting ESG and impact considerations in its own operations, portfolio companies as well as the wider investment industry. GENUI’s founders seek to create long-term value for investors while balancing attractive financial returns with social and ecological impact of its portfolio companies. 

The VfG team supported GENUI for a second year in a row in its ESG reporting efforts – including calculating the monetary value of GENUI’s societal contribution by investing in companies that contribute to health or environmental benefits. Learn more about how GENUI invests and manages for impact and discover its commitments to drive Good Entrepreneurship in 2022 and beyond here.

Is opening a new school with a focus on improving opportunities underprivileged kids worth it? The Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis we conducted for a new Quinoa-School in Herne, Germany, came to a clear conclusion: Conservatively calculated and with a view to only considering proven effects, we found that every euro invested would yield an added value to society of approximately 2 to 4,60 euros. The main drivers are access to better education and careers, which have positive long-term effects. 

Our team is currently accompanying the fifth cohort of committed social organisations in the development and professionalisation of their impact management. In the coming months, the participants will undergo a hands-on professional development program with carefully selected educational content and individual coaching on the topics of impact strategy, data collection and analysis, management for results and communication. Nine institutions from Germany and Switzerland active in the fields of education, mentoring, social cohesion, social innovation, and environmental conservation are in our 2022 Impact Academy. 

 Want to be updated about how we at Value for Good help organisations “do good better”?

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You’ll learn how we advise, empower and inspire companies, public institutions, foundations and NGOs to address the world’s most pressing challenges.  We cover for instance news about our focus areas, latest projects, and own organisational development. And don’t worry, your inbox won’t be flooded – we normally share our news on a quarterly basis.

We are looking forward to sharing our (Value for) Good news with you! 

We are in the midst of preparations for the next Impact Academy, where we will accompany social organisations to improve their programmes even further, from strategy development to measuring and communicating for impact. For the first time, the Impact Academy will span a whole year, allowing us to put an even stronger focus on our coaching and organisational development support.

In the last cohort, we had the pleasure of welcoming the Digitale Helden and now Anna Scharf and Marie-Juliette Leißner from the Digitale Helden team are sharing their experiences. Learn more about how they use impact management in their organisation. We couldn't be happier with their determination and results! 

Never waste a good crisis - We are insprired by START Stiftung's attitude to dealing with the consequences of COVID-19. Their recently released impact report shows how they leveraged this unprecedented situation to rethink their impact approach and quickly implement new and innovative ideas. Moreover, it is a great example of how to communicate your impact in an easily digestible yet professional way.

We are proud that Benedikt Alt, our impact management "guru" and Principal at VfG, is featured on pages 26 - 27 of the report.

What are the most pressing challenges related to climate change and what role can companies play - globally and locally - in addressing them? Clara Péron discussed this topic and the significance of corporate leadership in reducing CO2 emissions along with experts from ClimatePartner and Positerra in an online event with more than 1,000 leaders and decision-makers across Germany.

She encouraged corporate leaders to work towards one central goal: achieving climate neutrality. While this is of course a challenge - saving the planet does not come easily - she emphasized that Germany and Europe can build on the mechanism of our social market economy ("soziale Marktwirtschaft") and thereby build not only a social, but also an ecological market economy ("ökologische Marktwirtschaft").

Exceptional challenges, such as a global pandemic, require new ideas and solutions.

We are therefore very excited to support Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust in bringing to life Rise - a new global program funded as part of a $1 billion philanthropic commitment to talent from Eric and Wendy Schmidt. Rise finds extraordinary young people all around the globe and supports them for life as they use their talents to build a better world. 

Applications for the program are open globally, including in Germany.

 We are proud to announce that our leadership has been strengthened by appointing Rayd Abu-Ayyash as a Managing Director alongside Clara Péron.

A graduate of Harvard University and the London School of Economics, Rayd brings more than 15 years of experience and a wealth of skills to Value for Good from his years at McKinsey & Co., advising senior government officials, and leading strategic change in the financial sector. Rayd began working with Value for Good as a freelancer in 2017 and by 2019, feeling fully identified with a purpose-driven organization, decided that Value for Good was “home”. He is passionate about economic development, renewable energy and urban design. He created the Value for Good Impact Academy and has since been leading our work on integrating technology into impact management and strategic decision making.

Just over a year ago, in an industrial loft in Berlin Kreuzberg, we brought together experts from academia, tech, business, government and civil society to embark on a strategy refresh. We had just put the finishing touches on our revised approach and were planning to celebrate our 5 years as a company when Covid-19 hit. So instead of holding a big party, we thought we'd launch our new strategy online as part of an expanded 2019 annual report. Download it here to read about our approach ("advise, empower and inspire") and focus areas going forward. 

Generali's The Human Safety Net (THSN) supports entrepreneurship among refugees in Europe with tailored training programs and access to finance to help them set up successful businesses. Covid-19 has hit refugee entrepreneurs particularly hard: young businesses often don't have a financial buffer to fall back on and the bureaucratic language to access state support can be tricky to grasp - even for native speakers. To help THSN address this problem, we created easy-to-use, publicly accessible guides for entrepreneurs in Germany and France that explain in simple steps what measures they can access and how.

We were in the midst of holding the 3rd edition of the Value for Good Impact Academy ("Wirkungsakademie") when Covid-19 hit. What used to be an intensive, hands-on training & coaching on impact management had to be repurposed to fit an online-only setting. Thanks to the eagerness of participants from leading foundations and NGOs in Germany to carry on with the program, we redesigned our course to be delivered online, leveraging digital tools such as miro, slido and virtual break-out rooms. For more information about future on- and offline editions of the Impact Academy, contact Benedikt Alt balt@valueforgood.com.

And when we're not zooming, teaming and skyping with clients or delivering online trainings, we reflect fondly on our last physical event on January 30th, which we co-hosted with the Harvard Alumni Club of Berlin, the Aspen Institute of Germany and Dussmann: a book discussion with Bina Venkataraman, author of "The Optimist's Telescope." One of the topics of her book is how to prepare for disasters: playing out doomsday scenarios with government, companies and civil society can help design effective policies that prepare us for the worst. A great read in these times, available here.