The Seal of Impact

PHINEO’s Seal of Impact at a glance

The Seal of Impact: Show the world what impact you have!

Are you active­ly com­mit­ted to soci­ety with your project? And you want to show that your engage­ment has a proven impact? — Then have your project ana­lyzed by PHI­NEO and show with the Seal of Impact that you make a difference!

In order for you to have your project ana­lyzed by us, it must match our cur­rent call for pro­pos­als. More infor­ma­tion on this, you can find on the page of our call for pro­pos­al (ger­man only).

There are two seals of approval in Ger­many — one of them is the Seal of Impact”. It is free of charge. You can use the Seal of Impact in var­i­ousways in your com­mu­ni­ca­tion — on the web­site, in dona­tion let­ters and on posters. With this seal you show poten­tial sup­port­ers: You have what it takes to make a big impact and you han­dle entrust­ed funds with care!

What’s the ben­e­fit of the analysis?

Non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions receive con­struc­tive feed­back through­out the whole analy­sis process. In addi­tion to an inde­pen­dent assess­ment of their strengths and weak­ness­es, they receive advice on how they can achieve more in their every­day work with sim­ple means.

In the event of being award­ed, non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions can use the Seal of Impact in a num­ber of ways in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In addi­tion, com­pa­nies and foun­da­tions like to draw on our pool of rec­om­mend­ed projects when they are look­ing for new fund­ing projects.

Have orga­ni­za­tions already received high­er dona­tions through the Seal of Impact?

Yes, we know of many exam­ples where the award­ed Seal of Impact has had a pos­i­tive effect on receiv­ing dona­tions. We know of indi­vid­ual dona­tions in the five to six-fig­ure range.

Alone through the nation­wide fundrais­ing cam­paign DEUTSCH­LAND RUN­DET AUF, which exclu­sive­ly sup­ports projects award­ed by PHI­NEO, 10 mil­lion euros in dona­tions have been raised so far. A con­sid­er­able part of the 100 mil­lion euro fund­ing bud­get of the SKala ini­tia­tive also goes to Seal of Impact projects.

We also know of non-mon­e­tary dona­tions in the form of con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices, work­shops and train­ing cours­es that orga­ni­za­tions have received as a result of the Seal of Impact.

A sur­vey among the Seal of Impact orga­ni­za­tions in the sum­mer of 2018 yield­ed the fol­low­ing results (n=114)

  • Orga­ni­za­tions using the Seal of Impact­thus increase the like­li­hood to gen­er­ate high­er fundrais­ing income. Of those who active­ly use the seal, 58% con­firmed high­er fundrais­ing income; while only 47% of orga­ni­za­tions not using the label did so.
  • The Seal of Impact is a door open­er espe­cial­ly for foun­da­tions. Approx. 78% of the orga­ni­za­tions that have been award­ed with the seal, entered into new coop­er­a­tions with at least one foundation.
  • 94% of those sur­veyed would rec­om­mend the PHI­NEO analy­sis to oth­er organizations.
  • 79% of all orga­ni­za­tions stat­ed that they had ben­e­fit­ed from an image boost as a result of the award.
  • 83% of all orga­ni­za­tions have used the analy­sis process for inter­nal learn­ing and qual­i­ty devel­op­ment, and e.g. ini­ti­at­ed changes in the orga­ni­za­tion. Only 4% indi­cat­ed that their expec­ta­tions in this respect were not fulfilled.

What hap­pens in the analy­sis process?

In our analy­sis feed­back, we explain what we par­tic­u­lar­ly like about the orga­ni­za­tion and in which areas there is poten­tial for opti­mi­sa­tion. We give suggestions…

  • on the impact ori­en­ta­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion in its project work, e.g. with regards to tar­get review, qual­i­ty devel­op­ment and learn­ing culture
  • on the pros and cons of the respec­tive orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture, e.g. on the inter­ac­tion between the com­mit­tees and the management;
  • on con­trol mech­a­nisms and the need for finan­cial auditing;
  • as to why it makes sense to work as trans­par­ent­ly as pos­si­ble and what spe­cif­ic require­ments this entails

Par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions receive this con­sult­ing ser­vice free of charge — regard­less of whether they are ulti­mate­ly award­ed our Seal of Impact.

And in any case, it applies: There is no musts, only cans! It is entire­ly up to you which of our ideas you final­ly want to imple­ment. Of course we treat all data strict­ly confidential!

Ques­tions about the Seal of Impact

What does the Seal of Impact tell us?
The Seal of Impact is a sym­bol of effec­tive soci­etal engage­ment in Ger­many. It is award­ed to non-prof­it projects that have the poten­tial to make a par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive con­tri­bu­tion to solv­ing a spe­cif­ic social prob­lem. We use a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based pro­ce­dure — the PHI­NEO analy­sis — to deter­mine whether a project meets the nec­es­sary requirements.
How do you get the Seal of Impact?

The Seal of Impact is exclu­sive­ly for non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions and projects.
A non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion receives the Seal of Impact after suc­cess­ful­ly pass­ing the four-stage analy­sis process. The analy­sis process is linked to a the­mat­ic call for pro­pos­als, which we con­duct approx­i­mate­ly once a year.
Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the call for pro­pos­als and the analy­sis are free of charge.
There are no analy­ses with­out a call for proposals.

Is there a black­list, or is it pub­lished some­where, who has par­tic­i­pat­ed with­out suc­cess in the analy­sis procedure?
No, we sole­ly pub­lish the names of those orga­ni­za­tions and projects that have suc­cess­ful­ly under­gone the analy­sis pro­ce­dure and have been award­ed the Seal of Impact. We main­tain strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty about projects that fail the analy­sis or with­draw their application.
How long is the seal valid?

The Seal of Impact has no peri­od of valid­i­ty. How­ev­er, each seal bears a date, and thus pro­vides infor­ma­tion about the time­li­ness of the analysis.

Get more information:

Sonja Schäffler

Major Donor Consulting & Impact Analysis
+49 151 116 464 12
sonja.schaeffler@phineo.org