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  1. An institution, body, office or agency established by or based on the Treaty on European Union and the Treaties establishing the European Communities.

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Call key data

Social innovation call for proposals: actions to develop impact performance intelligence services for the social impact investing market actors

Funding Program

European Social Fund+

Call number

ESF-2024-SOC-IMP

deadlines

Opening
27.03.2024

Deadline
04.07.2024 17:00

Funding rate

85%

Call budget

€ 4,500,000.00

Estimated EU contribution per project

between € 500,000.00 and € 750,000.00

Link to the call

ec.europa.eu

Link to the submission

ec.europa.eu

Call content

short description

The expected outcome of this call is to promote informed and better investment decisions, greater market transparency, and performance benchmarking, with the objective to promote investments in social purpose entities (social enterprises, social start-up, impact firms, etc.) through enhanced data capabilities services, and impact management tools and practices. Hence, this call will match the need expressed by many actors in the market, which are showing an increasing data hunger, not enough addressed by current public and private initiatives.

Call objectives

The call’s added value is the contribution it will make to overcome the challenges that so far prevented small-case actors to multiplicate and scale-up, reaching a level of operation that could shift the market towards greater trust, shared/accessible knowledge, and transparency. This is expected to happen through the support provided by this call for proposals, as it will help several players to overcome their limited capacity to give continuity to the much-needed research, development and innovation actions.

Furthermore, following the social innovation logic, which is built on collective intelligence efforts matched with bottom-up and (often) entrepreneurial solutions, this call for proposals will provide the needed support to the development of new solutions (products, services, models, markets, processes etc.) leading to new or improved capabilities and relationships and better use of assets and resources.

At the same time, the overall structure of the call, as also shown by the requirements in terms of the composition of consortia submitting their proposal, revolves around the building blocks of social experimentation projects, where a multi-stakeholder approach is key, especially for needs assessment, mapping and benchmarking of existing solutions.

An additional expected outcome of the call is to overcome the inner tension between innovation or experimentation and business development or growth that are inherent to those actors already delivering services in the field of impact management as well as to those willing to exploit their expertise and know-how approaching the sector. If on the one hand there is a need to develop a business through the launch of a product or service that is easily scalable, on the other hand experimentation processes are highly risky from a business perspective, especially when they are designed in a way that embeds since its inception phase the issue of scalability and growth.

For this reason, the call aims at providing funding to ease a proper and effective balance between experimentation and business development, ensuring not only the beneficiaries will reach a development stage that allows for scaling their activities, but also their ability to extrapolate important and re-usable learnings from such process.

In fact, the final objective of the call is not only to have a new service or product for impact data verification, impact performance intelligence, or for any other knowledge-driven innovation models for better decision-making in the social impact investment market, but also that the new product or service that has been designed, developed, piloted and tested, and initially validated by the market, is also ready to be scaled up.

For this reason, ultimate goal of this call for proposals is to ensure the continuity of the actions after the period of Union financing provided for in the Grant Agreement, and hence the call’s results will mainly depend on the achievement of a set of well- defined milestones rather than the positive evaluation of the agreed deliverables.

Themes and priorities:

In the context of this call, because of the innovation and experimentation component above-mentioned, the testing dimension and evaluation and scaling, along with the iterative process, are fundamental aspects of the expected proposals, which priority is to set up or bring at scale marketable innovative solutions for impact data verification, impact performance intelligence, or for any other knowledge-driven innovation models for better decisionmaking in the social impact investment market.

For this reason, on top of specific requirements in terms of consortium composition, market validation is considered a fundamental proxy for assessing the successful alignment of the project’s results with the overall themes and priorities of the call.

From this point of view, the scope of the call is set by the fact that social impact has become a key market trend. Some companies are strengthening their social responsibility component, others are even adapting their business models to maximise social impact along with profits, or are adopting socially-oriented policies on their value chains. On the other hand, social enterprises and impact-firms are all about the primacy of the social impact (instead of the profit-seeking approach). An increasing amount of investors is interested in taking into account these practices when called to take an investment decision. However, on both the demand and the supply side, it is not always easy to understand to what extent claims on impact actually reflect the reality. Also, even when impact claims are well supported by independent studies, access to data is often limited. Furthermore, comparability among different companies on their ability to generate intentional social impact is limited too.

The call for proposals will provide support to those actors currently delivering services or products, or those actors able and willing to design and develop new services or products that could help overcome the above-mentioned challenges, which in turn will be instrumental in addressing the impact washing phenomenon, being it intentional or not, and to face the low availability or limited accessibility of quality market signals on actual social impact performance.

In fact, in the market there are already a few actors able to provide social impact management services, including measurement, independent verification, assurance, certification, etc. Some of these companies are also able to benchmark companies against the social impact they generate. Others can provide a social impact outlook to market players, or ranking them based on different variables, including the social impact.

On the other hand, the social impact investing market needs not only currently operating actors to scale and grow, but it requires an increase of the available services and products. Hence this call for proposals also encourages newcomers, which might be newly established companies or businesses working in other sectors but with relevant expertise and skills to develop and deliver successful services and products in this field.

In order to have more and better-informed investment decisions, greater market transparency, and performance benchmarking, the European Commission intends to support these actors, especially because they might face high entry costs and difficulties in accessing the market, and need important investments to scale, as this often requires the adoption of more sophisticated technologies (automated data gathering through web-scraping techniques, big data analytics through machine learning algorithms, etc.).

Therefore, the themes covered by this call are the provision of enhanced data capabilities services, as well as impact management tools and practices to social purpose entities, with the objective to make them easily available in in the market.

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Expected effects and impacts

The expected result of the call is to help fostering innovation and experimentation for populating the social impact investing ecosystem, so to ensure continuity after the end of the grant with more and stronger actors able to bring to the market impact data verification and impact performance intelligence services, and other knowledge-driven innovation models for social impact investing decision-making. Ultimately this should enable more and better-informed investment decisions, greater market transparency, and performance benchmarking. Moreover, this in turn would reduce the space for opportunistic behaviours and information asymmetries, increasing trust among market players and setting the right conditions for the market growth. A stronger, more transparent, and better functioning market for social impact investment is instrumental to deliver on the European Pillar of Social Rights by promoting investments in many of the areas covered by its principles.

Expected results

The activities to be funded will be instrumental for designing, experimenting, piloting, validating, developing and/or expanding the above mentioned services, which include– but are not limited to – impact data verification (i.e. the assessment of an investor’s impact management practices or impact performance against specific industry standards) and, more broadly, impact performance intelligence services, which in turn comprise the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of relevant impact performance information.

Common tools of impact performance intelligence services might include – but are not limited to – reporting, online analytical processing, predictive or prescriptive analytics, dashboard development, data or text mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, rating, and signalling.

Therefore, the activities that can be carried out under this call for proposals are, on the one hand, all those usual activities an entrepreneur would carry out to move from the ideational phase of a service or product to its commercialization (product/service ideation, product/service development, product/service go-to-market, product/service business set up, and product/service business fundraising and growth); on the other hand, given the objective of the call and through a strong experimentation component, activities that can be carried out under this call for proposals relates also to the research, development and innovation activities usually performed to have a product or service that allows the business to scale and grow.

Although more details on the expected activities are explained under the potential deliverables mentioned in the next paragraph, along with the key milestones, the following ones can be indicatively considered as specific activities that can be funded under this call for proposals:

  • Brainstorming sessions for idea generation, market research to validate the feasibility of the idea, identification of potential business options, and definition of target customers and their needs
  • Market research activities, analysis of strengths and weaknesses of competitors, identification of the unique selling proposition based on the analyses
  • Drafting and elaboration of business plans with value proposition, outline of business goals, missions, and vision, definition of the revenue model and pricing strategy, development of the overall financial strategy, including financial projections and preliminary budget
  • Legal analysis and consultation for the identification of necessary licenses and permits, negotiation to define ownership, equity distribution, and roles/responsibilities in a new or pre-existing business, establishment of financial contributions, profit/loss distribution, dispute resolution, non-compete and confidentiality agreements, intellectual property rights and ownership, corporate governance and exit strategy
  • Definition of operational processes and workflows, identification and planning for necessary equipment and technology, development of guidelines for ongoing operations, performing of required acquisition of or investment in necessary equipment and technology
  • Definition and project activities on the goals and objectives of the product or service, outlining of the required features and functionalities, specification of project scope, budget and timeline
  • Research and development activities, including experimentation and prototyping activities, along with – if applicable – the definition of thetechnology framework, design and creation of back-end and front-end software wireframes, development of the architecture and prototypes for user interface, iteration of design processes and gathering of feedback and incoporation of changes
  • Product or service development activities through selection of the appropriate technology stack, writing of back-end and front-end code, implementation of features and functionalities as per the design specifications
  • Product or service piloting, validation and testing activities, including its development strategy, perform usability testing to extrapolate success factors and lernings to ensure a positive user experience, and – if applicable – identification of bugs and fix
  • Product or service launch planning and execution activities, set up of monitoring and exploitation mechanisms of pilot results for deployment, and addressing issues arising during deployment and first phases
  • Product or service maintenance and support activities, definition of processes for addressing post-launch issues, updates to be released and new features, including identification of quality long-term support strategies
  • Development (design and implementation) of a comprehensive marketing plan, identification of target marketing channels, formulation of brand development and market positioning strategy, creation and execution of sales strategy
  • Product or service customer acquisition activities, including planning and implementation (online and/or offiline), definition of customer retention actions and programs
  • Design of growth plan based on evaluation activities of business processes and based on break-even analysis, assessment of strengths and weaknesses of and fundings needs for expansion opportunities and/or scaling operations

Applicants are expected to provide a detailed description of their target market in their Application Form – Part B, under 1.2 Needs analysis and specific objectives. This should include an outline of the current situation in the target market and the research already available and areas which require further development.

Furthermore, applicants are expected to provide a detailed description of the social innovation and experimentation methodology underpinning the product or service development plan in their Application Form – Part B, under 2.1 Concept and methodology.

Proposals to be funded under this call shall have three main milestones, all to be considered strictly instrumental to ensure continuity of the actions after the period of Union financing provided for in the Grant Agreement:

  • The first milestone consists of the following two alternatives:
    • the registration of the new company with the appropriate authorities and according to the laws of the country in which the new entity is legally established;
    • in case there is no new company set up and the parties agree to bring the product or service to the market through an already existing entity part of the consortium, the milestone will be the contract between the parties establishing new corporate structure and relevant clauses of the agreement;
  • The second milestone consists of a public event where the product/service is officially presented, along with testimonials from at least three new clients, whose status needs to be proved by the underlying signed contracts with specific reference to the product or service acquired;
  • The third milestone consists of the following three alternatives:
    • securing investment capital for the growth of the business; this has to be at least 1.2 times the overall amount of the grant, and should be proved by the related signed investment contracts, which should have as object the transfer of repayable capital (no grant) to the company, being it new or shaped according to the concrete achievement of the first milestone, for the implementation of the business growth plan and its scaling;
    • in case the beneficiary of the grant will not consider investments as a priority for the business growth and scale, a signed joint venture contract with another grant’s beneficiary for a common growth strategy based on commercial collaboration and joint business development plan of at least 1.5 times the average duration of the involved parties’ projects;
    • in case the beneficiary is considering investing its own resources for the business growth, a reached volume of sales of the product or service of at least 0.4 times the overall amount of the grant, as a proof of investment capacity and market validation, which can be demonstrated either by the company’s balance sheets or by the signed sale contracts.

A first required deliverable that must be submitted before reaching the first milestone is the “Business idea and execution plan”, which should include at least a comprehensive presentation of the business idea and the business model, its development plan with its own milestones, and the expected timeline.

For more information regarding indicative deliverables, please consult pages 15-17 of the call document.

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Eligibility Criteria

Regions / countries for funding

EU Member States, Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT)
Moldova (Moldova), Albania (Shqipëria), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Iceland (Ísland), Kosovo (Kosova/Kosovë / Косово), Montenegro (Црна Гора), Norway (Norge), Serbia (Srbija/Сpбија)

eligible entities

Education and training institution, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Mandatory partnership

Yes

Project Partnership

Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least two (2) applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities), which complies with the following conditions:

  • At least one applicant should be a research centre or entity affiliated with a University;
  • At least one applicant should be a private or public investor ; or a support organisation;
  • The consortium must be made up of applicants based in at least two different eligible countries in order to promote mutual learning and facilitate a transnational dimension.

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

  • be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • •U Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
    • non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated to the ESF+ or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature (list of participating countries)

Specific cases

Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of self-employed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).

International organisations are NOT eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.

Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.

EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.

Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. Please note that if the action will be implemented by the members, they should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible).

Social partner organisations — These include notably the European social partner organisations that are consulted in accordance with Article 154 TFEU (for the list, see List of consulted organisations) as well as other European-level social partner organisations that are not included in this list, but who are for example involved in the preparation and launch of European social dialogue at sector level. Social partner organisations without legal personality are eligible provided that the conditions for entities without legal personality (see above) are met.

Beneficiaries from countries with ongoing negotiations for participation in the programme (see list of participatingcountries above) may participate in the call and can sign grants if the negotiations are concluded before grant signature and if the association covers the call (i.e. is retroactive and covers both the part of the programme and the year when the call was launched).

other eligibility criteria

Financial support to third parties is not allowed.

Additional information

Topics

Competitiveness of Enterprises, Employment/Labour Market, SME & entrepreneurship

Relevance for EU Macro-Region

EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region

UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)

project duration

between 24 and 36 months

Additional Information

Proposals must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:

  • Application Form Part A — contains administrative information about the participants (future coordinator, beneficiaries and affiliated entities) and the summarised budget for the project (to be filled in directly online)
  • Application Form Part B — contains the technical description of the project (to be downloaded from the Portal Submission System, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded)

Mandatory annexes and supporting documents (to be uploaded):

  • detailed budget table/calculator: not applicable
  • CVs (standard) of core project team
  • Activity reports of last year
  • list of previous projects (key projects relevant for the subject of the call in the last 3 years) (template available in Part B)

Proposals are limited to maximum 40 pages (Part B). Evaluators will not consider any additional pages.

Call documents

Call document ESF-2024-SOC-IMPCall document ESF-2024-SOC-IMP(979kB)

Contact

ESF+ Programm Österreich
Website

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