Making an impact with Rikx 💥

On Monday 13th of March, the first Impactmakersevent took place. And Rikx was there.

The aim of the meeting was to let attendees hear how easy it is to make impact through your business. This can be done in many ways, for example by adapting your own business processes, but at this meeting the focus was on social return.

With this municipal policy, the municipality wants to encourage companies, which have a large order from the municipality, to create jobs. This is expressed concretely in a financial task. This used to be called 'the 5% rule', but now it is tailor-made.

Often this works out fine, but not always. Think of some smaller consultancy assignments. Then you do have an obligation to create employment, and you want to, but don't know how. And that's why there was an extensive focus on Rikx as a tool.

In a panel discussion, impact entrepreneur and researcher Mireille van den Berg first talked about the possibilities offered by Social Return in terms of untapped opportunities. Then Lodi van Brussel, as Social Return team manager at the WSPR, spoke about the move towards a new policy that aims to provide more opportunities for impact entrepreneurs. The Rikx will be included in this new policy. Following that, our director Maarten Broekema briefly explained what Rikx is and how it works.

But how does it work in practice? To this end, Wendy Nijkerk from Upsiders was given the floor and confirmed the simplicity of working through Rikx. Finally, Hilal Makhoukhi from CurrentWerkt shared his positive experience, as a participant with a project in Rikx round 3, with the application process.

After the discussion, alderman Tim Versnel spoke and stressed the importance of impact entrepreneurs for the city of Rotterdam. This was followed by the development of the digital city map developed by Voor Goed // Aanjagers van sociaal ondernemerschap (www.impactondernemen010.nl), which shows a lot of impact entrepreneurs.

During the drinks that followed, there was plenty of networking and we look back on a great meeting. Many thanks to Voor Goed // Aanjagers van sociaal ondernemerschap for organising this event!

#Rikx #Impacteconomy #VoorGoed

📸 by Mirjam Lems