Social organizations and enterprises must now more than ever demonstrate the added value of their activities and justify the allocation of government funds. On the other hand, organizations also want to understand the added value of their services or projects so they can learn more internally about how to further achieve their mission and desired impact. This is also the case in the social economy.

We therefore embarked on an action research project together with and for the social economy sector in Flanders, to investigate what impact the social economy has and how this can be made visible.

We started from the assumption that impact measurement would strengthen the social economy sector. When the sector can make its impact visible, it can have a stronger position in negotiations with the government. Furthermore, we assumed that impact measurement would stimulate the sector's professionalization. Focusing on impact shifts the emphasis from "well-intentioned" to "well done." Implementing impact-oriented work and implementing impact measurement within an organization can further enable and optimize its activities to achieve its mission and the desired added value for all stakeholders. Moreover, a set of shared sector-wide indicators also allows organizations to compare their activities.