Our Future” Foundation is one of the first Russian organizations that joined the Global Impact Investing Network, the Asian Venture Philanthropists Network, and the Euclid Network of Civil Society & Social Enterprise Leaders. What do these organizations do and how are they changing the landscape of social entrepreneurship development? What are the benefits of membership in such organizations?

Our Future” Foundation was the first Russian organization to become a GIIN member in 2013. GIIN and similar organizations accumulate information about the activities of their members, development and investment in social entrepreneurship around the world, analyze and organize this information, develop scientific and practical tools that can help create new organizations for impact investing, trying to organize communication between members at regular conferences. Sometimes it is possible to attract impact investment from other countries through such organizations, but this is not commonplace yet. For the most part, the Foundation uses membership in this organization to keep abreast of major trends and developments that are emerging in impact investing.

The Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) is a Singapore-based social investor network aimed at building a community of social impact investment projects across Asia.

The Association’s main mission is to increase the flow of financial, human and intellectual capital into the social sector by uniting and empowering major shareholders. It uses such tools as capital pooling, community building, and organizing events to disseminate knowledge and best practices of the practicing network members.

AVPN has more than 600 members from 33 countries. “Our Future” Foundation was the second participating organization from Russia. Most participants are geographically located in Asia, but some come from North America and Europe.

Participation in AVPN provides the following opportunities: access to events organized by AVPN; opportunities to communicate with investors and make joint deals through the Deal Share platform; access to educational materials, case studies, and analytical materials.

The Euclid Network is a European network of leaders in social entrepreneurship and civil society that was founded in Paris in March 2007. It brings together organizations from 31 countries, including representatives of social organizations and associations of social enterprises, universities, non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, and social investors. “Our Future” Foundation became a member of the Euclid Network in 2019.

Membership allows access to members-only content, such as the Managing Positive Change webinar series, insider knowledge, advice and support on impact measurement and social innovation. The Euclid Network makes it possible to find partners for joint research, and to share experiences at joint events.

In one of your interviews, you said that when providing financial support to social entrepreneurs, the Foundation pays special attention to such an indicator as the degree of social impact. How do you measure it?

Here I would like to mention that the Foundation has many different programs of financial support, and each program includes an individual approach to developing the criteria for evaluating projects. But, of course, social impact is always at the top of the list. If we talk about return on investment in existing projects, we need the evidence base of the declared social effects of the project, for example, laboratory-confirmed environmental friendliness of the products, scientific evidence of the usefulness of the applied methods of preschool development, the presence of reliable positive feedback on the work of the project, etc. We further analyze a number of the largest projects using the SROI (Social Return on Investment) methodology. If we talk about supporting projects at the startup stage, we rely on the predicted values of the effects, comparing them with the available results base from other projects in the same field.