Social Equality as a central thematic
Many of the challenges we see today are not isolated issues, but deeply interconnected.
Inequality persists across multiple dimensions, access to education, financial stability, meaningful work, and reliable information. These gaps are often not caused by a lack of solutions, but by how systems are designed and who they serve.
In many cases, systems that were built to create stability and opportunity have become complex, fragmented, or exclusionary. Incentives are not always aligned with long-term outcomes. Access is uneven. And those who could benefit the most are often the hardest to reach.
The “S” in ESG is one of the most overlooked dimensions in impact investing. Yet the scale of the challenge is hard to ignore. Across Europe, roughly one in five people is at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Nearly a quarter of children grow up in vulnerable circumstances. Mental health challenges affect one in six Europeans. And while access to education is broadly available, outcomes remain deeply uneven — shaped more by background than by potential.
Social inequality rarely has a single cause. It emerges from two reinforcing realities: unequal starting positions, and systems that do not work equally well for everyone. Differences in financial security, access to work, education, and reliable information mean that not everyone has the same opportunities to get ahead.
Many of the systems that shape daily life — from financial services to education to the labour market — were not designed with everyone in mind. They can be hard to navigate, difficult to trust, or simply out of reach. Information is not always transparent. Processes are not always fair. And for people who are already in a vulnerable position, these barriers are often the hardest to overcome.
Addressing inequality therefore means working on both levels at once: supporting people in vulnerable positions, and making systems fairer, more transparent, and safer. This dual focus is at the core of how Shaping Impact invests through SI3 Fund.
What we aim to achieve is captured in our Theory of Change. It shows how our investments in companies contribute to real social outcomes — and how those outcomes together move us toward more equal opportunities for everyone.
How do we look at measuring Impact at Shaping?
Measuring impact sounds straightforward. In practice, it rarely is.
Impact measurement is about understanding whether and how an activity contributes to meaningful change. Not just what a company does, but what difference it actually makes: to whom and to what extent.
Over time, a wide range of frameworks and methodologies have emerged to capture this, from detailed outcome tracking to comprehensive models like Social Return on Investment (SROI), which aim to quantify impact in financial terms.
In theory, these approaches offer rigour and comparability. In practice, they are often complex, time-intensive, and difficult to implement, particularly for early-stage companies that are still focused on building product, finding product-market fit, and staying alive.
We have experienced this firsthand.
When we launched the first fund, our ambition was to apply more comprehensive measurement frameworks across our portfolio, including SROI. While valuable in concept, we found that in reality, they often required disproportionate time and effort, both from companies and from us, without necessarily leading to better decision-making or company growth.
As a result, our approach has evolved. Today, we focus on clarity over complexity.
We work with each company to define a clear Theory of Change: how their product or service is expected to contribute to meaningful outcomes. From there, we track a limited set of output indicators that are directly linked to that theory: relevant for the company, measurable and feasible to collect. As a standard, they are part of the set of total metrics that we collect on a monthly basis, like revenue, costs, churn etc.
We recognise that the right measurement approach looks different for every company. For some, a simple dashboard of two or three key indicators is enough. For others, it makes sense to add periodic surveys, outcome tracking, or qualitative interviews. We help our portfolio companies design an approach that fits their stage, capacity, and the nature of their impact. Numbers alone do not tell the full story. Behind every metric is a person, a community, or a system that has changed. That is why we also capture impact stories — concrete narratives from the field that bring data to life. They help us understand not just whether impact is happening, but how and why.
