The Impact World This Week: 22 May 2025

Norway: A proportion of Norway’s US$1.3tn sovereign wealth fund – one of the world’s largest – should be set aside for investments that accept higher risk and lower returns to promote social and economic development in developing countries. That was one recommendation of the Citizens Assembly for Norway’s Future, made up of 56 citizens from across the country, selected to reflect a cross-section of the public. The Assembly, commissioned by seven civil society organisations, including Save the Children, Caritas and WWF, took place from January to May 2025 and published its 19 recommendations this week, each of which received more than 75% support from the assembly members. The seven civil society organisations have committed to working to ensure the recommendations are disseminated to decision-makers and to assess how they themselves can put them into practice.

Bhutan: “Mindful entrepreneurship” is anticipated to flourish in the world’s first “Mindfulness City”. The urban development project, founded by Bhutan’s King Jigme at the end of 2023, aims to integrate economic growth with mindfulness, holistic living and sustainability in the Gelephu region in line with the country’s famous Gross National Happiness philosophy. Speaking at the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) Policy Forum 2025 this week, Kinley Tenzin of the Bhutan Youth Development Fund said: “The new city will be a hub for multiple social enterprise ventures…I’m very hopeful for five or six years down the line.”

Global: Impact verifying firm BlueMark published its 6th annual Making the Mark report on best practices in impact investing this week. The research is based on 208 impact verifications performed by BlueMark, covering an aggregated US$301bn in impact assets under management. It assesses investors’ and funds’ performance in impact management, and publishes a coveted “leaderboard” of the best in class. The report found that impact management and measurement practices were becoming ever more sophisticated, as practices “previously considered cutting-edge now represent a baseline expectation for impact investors”. In this year’s top list of impact investors are Better Society Capital, Nuveen, Schroders, BlueOrchard and British International Investment among others. For the first time, the report also published a leaderboard for the funds with the best impact management and measurement practices, which include AgDevCo and Bain Capital Double Impact Fund III.

Global: A new effort to overcome the paucity of data about social enterprise around the world launched this week. Collecting Data on Social Enterprises: A playbook for practitioners has been created by the Advisory Group on Social Enterprise Data, convened by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum, to develop a more harmonised approach to social enterprise data collection and it presents the shared learnings of 25 organisations that have carried out social enterprise research including the International Labour Organization, the European Commission, the British Council, Impact Hub and Ashoka. The most comprehensive analysis to date identified 10m social enterprises worldwide. 

• Read more: India, China and USA are the giants of the social enterprise world, reveals new dataset by World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation

Europe: Political support which is only symbolic, a lack of access to sustainable financing and insufficient opportunities for strategic partnerships are key challenges the social enterprise sector in Europe currently faces. That’s according to The State of Social Enterprise Support in Europe report, drawn up from the Euclid Network’s annual consultation of its member social enterprise support organisations, which was published last week. The average rating by the network for political support by national governments was just 47 out of 100, while 91% of the organisations which responded said financing was a key challenge. Euclid said the report constitutes “a call to action for funders, policymakers, and ecosystem builders to step up, collaborate, and lead change”.

Global: Impact investing is increasingly embedded in government strategies around the world, according to GSG Impact, with some countries including Brazil, Japan and Türkiye formally mentioning “impact investing” in their national development plans A new report, Impact Economies Traction & Trends: Insights from 34 GSG National Partners, was launched in Kyoto, Japan, this week. The report found that impact investing wholesalers were a powerful tool to attract new capital and grow the impact investment market, looking at examples in the UK (where Better Society Capital is well established) as well as in other countries such as Japan and Portugal. The report also found that pension funds were becoming important providers of impact capital in different ways – with significant involvement of local authority pension funds in the UK, impact-committed large scale funds in the Netherlands, while French regulation has driven pension fund investment in social enterprises for decades.

Figure of the week: £8,000 is the amount BuildPalestine crowdfunded in just one day this week for its initiative to support social enterprises in Gaza. BuildPalestine, which connects global supporters with Palestinian social enterprises and charities, helped Child Smile, which runs educational theatre workshops for children in Gaza, reach a fundraising total of nearly  £15,000 (at time of publication). Following the success of the crowdfunder, BuildPalestine has set up a list of ‘Gaza Champions’ for its Nourishing Hope for Gaza initiative. The champions will help disseminate information about a crowdfunding campaign for a grassroots social enterprise or charity in Gaza once each month. 

• Read more: Rebuilding Gaza: Palestinian resilience through social enterprise

Movers and Shakers

Devin Chesney has been named as the new executive director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Chesney has been ANDE’s interim director for over a year, having previously worked for seven years as the organisation’s director of strategic development.