Across Europe, organisations are producing more sustainability and impact information than ever before. New reporting requirements, investor expectations, and public scrutiny have created an unprecedented volume of data on social and environmental performance. Yet a critical question remains: how can this information be transformed into intelligence that supports real decision-
making?
This is the challenge at the heart of Impact Intel, a European collaborative project working to improve how social impact performance is understood, assessed, compared, and used within the impact investing ecosystem.
The challenge is no longer access to data As Elena Rubio Bermúdez, Managing Director at Espacio RES, explains, the problem is not the absence of information. The difficulty lies in comparability, interpretation, and credibility. Investors, institutions, and society increasingly expect evidence behind sustainability claims, but comparing impact performance across organisations, sectors, and territories remains complex. Impact Intel addresses this gap by moving beyond traditional reporting approaches and developing methodologies that combine performance data, stakeholder perception, benchmarking, and coherence analysis. The goal is not simply to collect more data, but to generate actionable and comparable intelligence.
A new paradigm: impact intelligence
Luigi Corvo, Founder of Open Impact and Associate Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, describes impact intelligence as a transformative shift in how society evaluates social and environmental contributions.
Traditional assessments are often manual, isolated, and case-specific. Impact Intel seeks to create a more scalable and contextual framework by integrating the rigor of social science with the analytical power of artificial intelligence.
This combination enables stakeholders to access more sophisticated insights and opens new possibilities for understanding where impact is being created, how it is perceived, and how it can be strengthened.
Why this matters for investors
For impact investors, the implications are significant. Ines Henriquez, Investment Associate at CREAS, highlights the need to move beyond simply reviewing impact reports and start embedding impact data directly into investment workflows. Better integration of impact intelligence can support more nuanced, evidence-based, and values-driven investment decisions.
Wieteke Dupain, CEO of Euclid Network, connects this directly to the future growth of impact investing. Reliable, neutral, and comparable data is essential for investors who need to evaluate opportunities consistently across markets and sectors.
Without accessible impact intelligence, scaling impact investment becomes far more difficult.
Impact as a measure of resilience
The conversation also extends beyond investment strategy. Alessandra Lanza, Senior Partner at Prometeia, argues that impact intelligence is becoming increasingly important in a world characterised by continuous economic, social, and environmental shocks. As public resources become more constrained, businesses will be expected not only to generate profit but also to demonstrate
their contribution to stakeholders and future generations.
In this context, impact becomes a measure of resilience, responsibility, and long-term value creation.
Visibility and transparency for organisations
Vlada Semkina, Junior Consultant at Sinloc, emphasises another critical dimension: visibility. Many organisations creating meaningful social and environmental value struggle to stand out in a complex funding and policy landscape. At the same time, investors need transparent tools to understand how
their capital influences the companies they support.
Impact Intel aims to address both needs by improving the visibility of impact-generating organisations while providing investors with more robust analytical tools for evaluating outcomes.
Building the next generation of impact intelligence
Together, these perspectives reveal a common message: the future of impact investing depends not only on more data, but on better intelligence.
Impact Intel is helping build the foundations of a more transparent and accountable impact economy by developing new ways to analyse, compare, and interpret social impact performance across sectors, territories, and organisations. Through collaboration between impact measurement experts, financial institutions, researchers, and ecosystem actors, the project is advancing a new generation of impact intelligence capable of supporting stronger, more credible, and more effective decision-making across Europe.
