The European Commission (DG EMPL) has published a call for proposal under ESF + "Social innovation call for proposals: actions to develop impact performance intelligence services for the social impact investing market actors”.

The purpose of the call for proposals is to address the barriers faced by the impact investing market (starting with the unclear definition of impact investing)  in order to better deliver on the European Pillar of Social Rights and in particular on active support to employment and access to essential services ( e.g. financial services).

The main result expected from 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.

With this call, the Commission intends to promote the provision of enhanced data capabilities services and impact management tools for social purpose entities (e.g. social enterprises, social economy entities, impact firms) to increase their social impact investment capacity.

To develop these services, the grant will fund activities such as impact data verification or impact performance intelligence services (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).