Welcome to everyone that's interested in impact assessment with regard to social entrepreneurship. My name is Michael Pirson. And I'm teaching social entrepreneurship at Fordham University, which is at the heart of New York City, has campuses in The Bronx and Manhattan. And I want to tell you a little bit of a story of one of our graduates that is now part of our incubator program. She had a story that's typically New York in some way that can help us understand impact assessment for something quite well. So as you may have heard, New York is a city of rich and poor, possibly quite divided like so many of those cities. Andra Tomsa, who started what she called Spare for Change, was working in the restaurant industry, serving the richest population in Manhattan. And then she left her workplace every night, seeing the many folks that are starving on the street, hanging out there, cold in winter, in summer when it's hot. And she thought, this is too strange for her to really deal with. And she felt that she needs to do something about it. And felt that exactly that environment, where she was working, could be part of the solution to the many folks that are actually hungry on the street. Now, you probably have heard of soup kitchens and the food bank, specifically in New York. It's helping those people already that are hungry to get food everyday. And what she was thinking, she will partner with the food bank and come up with a smartphone application that everyone was using at that time. And say, okay, well, listen, you have the possibility to do good while you're eating in your expensive restaurant. And you just round up the bill by as much as you want. And you can then give that money directly to the food bank. So when you enjoy a good meal, you make sure that others in New York also don't go hungry. And so she created this application that has a whole mechanism behind how she can incentivize people. And possibly then, with a number of restaurants, really help the restaurants that needed some marketing opportunity beyond the traditional one to give them loyalty points. But also, on the other hand, then really increase the group of folks that were giving, rounding up. And therefore then combating hunger. So now this is a complex kind of impact creation. But that's the kind of things that we're dealing with when we're talking about social entrepreneurship. So the impact assessment, when it comes in, it's helpful to think possibly along a line of a causal model. A theory of change, we call it. A logic model, especially when you're starting out and planning. How do you have impact through what? There are five general components of this logic model. The first one are called inputs or resources. The second one, the activities. What is it that you're doing with these inputs and resources? For example, Andra has as input the restaurants, the clients of the restaurant, the potential restaurants in New York City, those are inputs. She also has the capability of coming up with a technology to create an application so she has that as a resource. Now, what does she do? She transforms this and brings these people together and really markets this application. And then hopes that people will use that application. So that's her activity. Then, of course, as an output of that activity, the third element of that impact assessment, you create something that, well, you hope that those folks that have downloaded the application will round up. They will take pictures of their bill. And then we'll send money directly to the food bank. That's an output. That money then is actually transformed by a partner, the food bank, into food. That will then be delivered to people that are hungry in New York City. Of course, the ultimate impact she wants to create is reduce hunger, fight hunger. So at the end of this causal chain, once people have downloaded the application. Have given the money, have transferred it to the food bank. The food bank has transformed that into food and delivered it to the people. Then you see at the end of that impact chain assessment that poverty or hunger can be reduced. So that's a way to think about any kind of endeavor that you're trying to conceive and come up with. There are inputs that you have, there are activities that you do. And then you're trying to influence others to continue doing something with what you're trying to do. That is an output. It becomes an outcome ideally that then creates, as a logical consequence, the impact that you set out to do. So impacts probably will all range from poverty reduction, maybe reduction of climate footprint, etc. So you can use that in pretty much any kind of context. And then, at the end, you can assess briefly in dashboard measures whether you achieve the ultimate goal. With that, I leave you to try it out yourself. See how you can come up with very simple measures. To really just test whether you achieve the kind of impact that you set out to do. Thank you.
