BNP Paribas structures its 10th Social Impact Bond worldwide and its 1st in Belgium!
On the 4th of March, the 1st Belgian SIB ( Social Impact Bond) structured and financed by BNP...
To meet the expectations of its clients and partners in social and solidarity economy (SSE) and successfully design the first contracts with a social impact, BNP Paribas in 2015 implemented a method to assess the social and/or environmental impact of SSE players. The method consists of describing and highlighting the advantages that clients produce for their beneficiaries and society, in relation to their mission.
Maha Keramane, Head of Social Entrepreneurship and Microfinance, Europe in the Group’s CSR delegation, points out that “social enterprises have atypical, innovative business models. That is why we have to be creative in our way of analysing them.”
This social impact measurement tool fulfils several aims:
BNP Paribas established a method that is both qualitative and quantitative, at times including monetised indicators. To do this, the Group chose to divide the social entrepreneur sector into 7 Fields of Social Action (or DAS for Domaines d’Action Sociale) depending on the needs or services covered by the Social Enterprise:
Access to employment
Microfinance and support for entrepreneurship
Access to housing
Access to health and maintenance of autonomy
Access to education and equal opportunities
Environmental Protection
Actions to fight against precariousness
A total of 400 indicators were formulated around these 7 fields and 3 key questions:
WHO are the beneficiaries?
WHAT IS DONE for them?
WHAT RESULTS ARE obtained?
With this tool, the social enterprise can for instance assess its progress from one year to the next in terms of:
Capitalising on existing best practices, MESIS is based mainly on the impact methodology of BNP Paribas and INCO and on collaborative work with Caisse des Dépôts and KiMSO. The tool combines a selection process, the setting of targets that are assessed annually during the investment period, a dynamic approach that measures performance over time, and reporting according to Fields of Social Action (DAS) and BNP Paribas indicators.
Our partner La Fondation La France s’Engage has decided to use MESIS to measure the impact of projects that it supports.
“ Measuring impact, which is central to the NovESS fund, will help to standardise the setting of social targets in the same way as financial targets ”
Head of Social Entrepreneurship and Microfinance, Europe in the Group’s CSR delegation