Dear friend

Welcome to your monthly news snapshot from SIAA. This month we have an important change to the SIAA annual conference date and ask the question 'are we living in a social impact fantasy world?'

• The University of Sydney Business School develop Strategic Frame, a social impact framework to provide organisations with a way to strategically think about the impact of their activities. 
• Trident Social Investment Group publish 'Exceeding Expectations'. Researched by the Human Cities Institute, it tracks Trident's community impact and reports on their social accounts.  
• Read blogger's highlights from the Social Impact Exchange's Scaling Social Impact Conference. 
• The Alliance for Useful Evidence release a new report discussing how charity funders use and share evidence in practice.
• The RBS SE100 Index launch an online platform allowing organisations to track their growth and impact.

In the interest of delivering a truly engaging and participatory conference we have changed the date of our 2013 conference, Beyond Measurement, to Tuesday 10th December 2013, ESSEC Business School, Cergy-Pontoise, France.

This conference will be an opportunity to share and contribute to the body of knowledge developing around social impact analysis. If you want to get involved in shaping what we mean by 'Beyond Measurement' get in touch via hello@siaassociation.org.

Tickets and an initial agenda will be out in August-September time. Apologies for any inconvenience caused by the change.

SIAA Manager Ruth contemplates whether we are living in a social impact analysis fantasy world:

Social impact analysis and measurement is the growing hot topic among professionals involved in civil society organisations, philanthropy and social finance across Europe. However it is important to ask the question, are we all living in a fantasy world where we think social purpose organisations will implement and use impact analysis to improve their work?

In this blog I will give some real life examples of organisations and individuals from across Europe engaging in social impact analysis on a practical level, to counter the view that this is all one big fantasy. These examples are drawn from working in partnership with members of the Social Impact Analysts Association (SIAA) over the past four months to run a series of partner meetings or SIAA Impact Group launches in Estonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, UK and Spain. Across these countries, with their differing political, economic and social landscapes, there was a surprising level of engagement and consensus around three burning questions in this field continue>>

• We are happy to announce that we have partnered with Social Assests Measurements Inc to facilitate a national conversation on impact analysis in Canada, read more here.
• Check out our latest event report from our social impact analysis event in Bulgaria, in partnership with the Tulip Foundation.
• We have initial impact group events in Romania, Canada and Portugal in the pipeline for September and October. Event information will be available soon, but for now why not find out about our current impact group work. 
• We have been receiving great feedback from our members-only Connect Me portal and strongly encourage all members who are yet to do so to sign up! Not a member? Take a look here to find out how to join our growing international network.

Let us know for next time! We're always on the look out for recent work around social impact analysis.

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