Onwards to a well-being economy | Our 2024 highlights

This annual recap lists the highlights of our key projects, partnerships, and achievements. Whether launching transformative programmes, hosting inspiring events, or supporting local and global impact-driven organisations, we aimed to contribute meaningfully to Amsterdam's journey towards becoming a leading social and sustainable enterprise hub.

Dive into our ten 2024 highlights (in no particular order) to discover how we worked alongside entrepreneurs, policymakers, and communities to make a difference—one initiative at a time.

1. Amsterdam Impact continued the support of various Impact Deals such as with Clean the World. With the Impact Deals, Amsterdam Impact and MKB-Amsterdam aim to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that want to increase their impact by expanding their sustainability efforts and adding more social value. In January, we hosted a free webinar for hospitality businesses in the Amsterdam Area on how to do good while reducing costs by adopting circular practices. We also worked alongside Blue Road Academy to strengthen their mission of training newcomers to become tech specialists through a specially developed program that helps them find jobs.

2. March was packed with Impact meet-ups, including The Week of the Circular Economy (11-16 March), the largest national inspiration and networking event for and by circular entrepreneurs,  The Euclid Network (the European Social Enterprise Network) Impact Summit in The Hague (20 & 21 March), which aimed to drive crucial transformations towards an inclusive and sustainable society and economy and the Impact Summit Europe in Amsterdam  (26 & 27 March), a leading institutional investor conference to unite thought leaders and impact investors to catalyse private institutional capital to support the SDGs.

3. Together with Impact Hub we worked on Green at Heart. The programme aims to empower social startups and SMEs across the Netherlands, Spain, and Austria to become more sustainable and build a more impactful business through state-of-the-art diagnostic insights and the resources to turn these insights into action. An ESG tool helps entrepreneurs get a head start with their sustainability roadmap, in the run-up to the new European legislation coming in 2025.

4. IDEEC, the global Impact-Driven Entrepreneurship Education for Children, launched its toolkit for educators who want to inspire the next generation of problem-solvers and innovators. Read more about IDEEC here.

5. The 2024 For Good Leaders Summit aimed to unite the world's most forward-thinking decision-makers committed to building a regenerative economy. Over 1500 leaders committed to this pact during the two-day Amsterdam summit.  The main theme of the Summit 2024 is ‘Business for Good in Action’. The programme covered corporate activism, leadership, tech for good, B Corp and beyond, tech regenerative economy, the food system change, and sustainable finance.

6. We spoke to a dozen impact entrepreneurs from the ecosystem for the Founders Fridays series about their challenges, successes, and innovative projects, from queer beers and date pit coffees to representation in children’s toys, and a language learning app. Read the most recent one here.

7. Together with Metabolic, Impact Hub Amsterdam, and BwB, with the support of the City of Amsterdam (Amsterdam Impact), The DOEN Foundation, and Goldschmeding Foundation we formed The Circular Innovation Collective,  a consortium of impact-driven organisations aiming to play a leading role in the Dutch innovation ecosystem by accelerating the transition to a circular economy.  The flagship pilot of the CIC focuses on textile value chains in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region (MRA), aiming to help the MRA achieve 70% circular textiles by 2030.

8. We worked with Social Enterprise NL to develop an online course, Influencing Mainstream Business, in which social entrepreneurs learn to manage relationships with stakeholders, from suppliers to consumers, to make their mark and change the game.

9. We launched DIGISET, with partners all across Europe (from the Impact Hub Network, the Social Good Accelerator (SOGA) from France, FARI - AI for the Common Good Institute in Brussels, Eurocat - Technology Centre in Spain, CLUJ IT from Romania and CollectiveUP from Belgium to the City of Amsterdam), to support social SMEs, civil society organisations (CSOs), and cooperatives in their digital transformation, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), data, and new business models.

10. On November 28, social entrepreneurs, knowledge institutions, businesses, and government organisations gathered at Circa Amsterdam, the Netherlands' first fully circular event venue, for the first edition of Scale Your Impact (Schaal je Impact). The day aimed to spark collaborations for building a new economy, demonstrating that collective efforts yield greater results. Read the full report here. The same morning we organised the Work Conference ‘Procuring with Impact’, stimulating companies, organisations, and government departments to use their purchasing power to accelerate sustainable transitions, engage vulnerable groups, and purchase innovatively.

We wish you happy holidays and an impactful new year!