Wednesday, 24 March 2021 was a big day in Perth, WA – it was SIMNA’s first face to face gathering in over a year!

In a throwback to Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals, this event, held at social impact hub The Platform in Perth, allowed the invited panel to break out their inner thespian and deliver a whole new (and amusing) way to raise important questions and dilemmas related to social impact measurement from the perspective of various stakeholders:

• There was the dedicated (but philanthropically naive) CEO of a small not-for-profit organisation that she operated from her lounge room, aka Ali Sumner, member of SIMNA board and SIMNA WA committee member.
• There was the overworked operations manager that didn’t have time to think about such things, aka John Berger, CEO of the WA Alliance to End Homelessness.
• There was the philanthropist who had expectations of the recipient of his grants, aka James Boyd, founder of Impact 100 in Australia.
• There was the Social Impact consultant, dedicated to spreading the gospel of social impact measurement, aka Lee Partridge SIMNA WA Committee member.
• Last, but not least, there was the academic who miraculously managed to simultaneously both clarify and muddy the waters around social impact measurement, aka Paul Flatau, Professor and head of the Centre for Social Impact at UWA.

All were masterfully wrangled by the facilitator, aka Aden Date, Social Impact consultant, improv theatre founder and SIMNA WA committee member.

The audience responded well to this innovative form of information sharing and networking, so much so that there are murmurs around it becoming an annual event.

Our thanks to all who attended! Until we meet again,

Lee Partridge, March 2021