A Chat with Tiia Sammallahti Founder and CEO at Social Value Measurement Tool: whatimpact

Tell us about whatimpact

 

whatimpact is a female-founded tech for good startup. Providing an open access platform to help businesses better connect and partner with charities, social enterprises, community groups and schools (VCSEs) to deliver social value on a local level. As a two-sided marketplace, whatimpact offers the best available data about the organisations involved, including their work, beneficiaries and impact. Businesses can match with VCSEs based on their money, product and service donations, and volunteering efforts. 

Our matchmaking system and partnership management dashboards streamline coordination, cutting time and costs, while consolidating all data in one central location. Providing robust qualitative impact reporting backed by concrete evidence enables businesses to substantiate their social value claims. This is crucial for businesses navigating mandatory social value requirements in UK public sector tenders, allowing them to exhibit their  ESG achievements easily.

whatimpact’s data and matching services are free, although we offer premium services for our business customers. We are committed to never charging VCSEs and we do not take commission on donations. We compensate VCSEs with small grants when they report on the impact of our platform. 

We drive systems change in this challenging partnership creation, where it is important to find the right type of projects and organisations to work with. Well-built technology and data can be a massive help and enhance connectivity allowing more resources to be distributed efficiently to the right causes on a local level. 

 

 

What do you think makes whatimpact unique?

 

Our most obvious USP is that we are the only platform in this sector using open source charity data to populate our site and place all VCSEs in the UK on an interactive map based on their registration address but also the reach of the beneficiary work. It is easy to find VCSE led projects within specific council and city areas matching local authorities’, central government and housing associations’ social value criteria.

Beyond that, we have built the platform’s key features – matching system, volunteering management,  impact reporting – around on the operational needs of organisations. Making the platform not just useful but also easy to use. For our users, this means that there’s no longer any need to access multiple VCSE directories and multiple systems simply to identify suitable partners. With whatimpact, they can do everything they need in one place. Additionally, we work with an equal opportunity ethos, which means that we work with all user groups closely to train and educate them on successful partnerships. And we continually run research projects on social value and share best practices. 

Of course, as a SaaS product, we also offer a low cost, easy to adapt product for different business models, enabling all business sizes and types better manage social value. 

 

 

How has whatimpact evolved?

 

When we launched whatimpact in 2018,  the main motivation for businesses to collaborate with VCSEs was corporate social responsibility targets. Since then, the Social Value Act and Procurement Policy Note 06/20, and newly launched National Procurement Policy Statement have come into play, meaning that greater importance is placed on social value in public sector tendering.

As these developments have occurred, we’ve worked closely with local authorities, housing associations, and central government to better understand their social value requirements, and how we can help businesses to meet them through partnerships with VCSEs. Based on that cross-sector collaboration, we’ve now expanded out the platform as open source with a prospect to scale. 

 

What can we see from whatimpact in the future?

 

Our priority for whatimpact has always been strengthening its position as a National Social Value Marketplace in the UK. And that will continue. A growing number of public sector bodies are endorsing our site, making us more visible and supporting our work in making a difference in hyper-local social impact but there’s still work to be done. 

Next, we expect to expand our concept to other countries. We’re also collaborating more with social value monetisation tools (social value calculators). Green and social washing has drawn a lot of attention, and there is a real need to back the monetised values with real-life data from the ground. We are planning to help with that.