With its Social Report 2022, E4Impact published its second reporting document, proud of the new steps made forward. Conscious of being on a constant journey towards transparency and impact communication, this last Social Report has reached a higher level of clearness, thanks to some novelties that help to create awareness on how E4Impact achieves its mission.
Two are the main features that make the 2022 Social Report innovative:
On one hand, the document structure follows the organization’s Theory of Change, giving the readers more knowledge and clarity on the roadmap that starts from the allocation of resources and ends with the outcomes and expected impact. E4Impact is committed to improving its results with rigorous monitoring, in order to report to its stakeholders not only information on the activities and beneficiaries reached, but also the short-, medium- and long-term changes it contributes to achieving.
On the other hand, the materiality analysis led to the identification of the E4Impact material topics and related future commitments. According to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), material topics “represent an organization’s most significant impacts on the economy, environment, and people, including impacts on their human rights”. To conduct the materiality analysis E4Impact identified 26 impact issues related to the three sustainability dimensions: social, environmental, and governance. Internal stakeholders and key external stakeholders were then asked to assess the importance they attached to the various issues.
Based on the materiality analysis results, E4Impact identified 9 key impact goals related to the SDGs that the organizazion will strive to achieve and to report on over the next 3 years. Among them, there’s the challenging goal of supporting African entrepreneurs in the start-up, scale-up, and access to financing of their companies in order to increase up to 8 the average jobs created per entrepreneur 2 years after our programs. See the table below to find out the priority topics and E4Impact future commitments.
Nevertheless, as well as being an opportunity for strategic reflection towards the future, the annual Social Report is the time to officially communicate the results achieved during the year. For E4Impact it was another year of growth, characterized not only by the steady increase in the staff number but also in the number of beneficiaries reached by development projects.
The workforce grew in Italy and in E4Impact offices in Africa by 47% compared to 2021 with 66 collaborators. The female component of the Foundation’s workforce reached 53%.
Governance was also strengthened with five new members joining the Steering Board, including 3 Italian organizations and 2 African delegates from the new governance body, the Alliance Council, which will represent the instances of African partner universities, Alumni, and key African stakeholders.
By focusing on activities, in 2022 E4Impact carried out:
- 12 editions of the Global MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship with the participation of 250 entrepreneurs, of which 34% were women and 25% under 30;
- 4 Acceleration programs for 54 companies;
- 18 development projects in collaboration with 83 project partners, through whichE4Impact trained 5,971 entrepreneurs and reached 37,720 beneficiaries through the Training of Trainers formula;
- First edition of the first-ever International Ph.D. programme specifically designed for African Scholars, started with 15 students in Management and Innovation and 8 students in Agri-Systems.
As E4Impact initiatives in the African continent grow, so does its Alumni Community. As of 2022, it counts more than 1,500 Alumni, meaning all those who have attended an MBA or participated in an Accelerator Program offered by the Foundation.
The aim is to consolidate the entrepreneurial network at a local and pan-African level to support business development and foster partnership opportunities so that the entrepreneurs’ journey in E4Impact represents an experience that goes beyond the completion of the training programme.
To conclude, the Social Report is an opportunity for all organisations, both in the third sector and in the for-profit world, to become aware of the results achieved and the improvements needed, and thus to be accountable to the stakeholders. For E4Impact the stakeholder engagement has been particularly important this year and for sure it will continue to be a main focus in the future. This is the only way to make sure the organization is on the right path.
Erica Negro