SF TIG: Kicking off Social Finance Week at AEA365! Our 2024 in review by Morgan Buras-Finlay and Laura Budzyna

Date: Sunday, January 26, 2025

Hello! We are Morgan Buras-Finlay and Laura Budzyna, the 2024 Co-Chairs for the Social Finance TIG. We are thrilled to kick off our TIG’s AEA365 blog week and share what we’ve been up to this year – and what we think makes our TIG special.

The Social Finance TIG, formerly known as the Social Impact Measurement TIG, is a space for AEA members to share, learn and explore how organizations and initiatives produce, measure and manage social and financial returns. We have three main goals:

To foster connection and knowledge sharing among the evaluation sector and market actors interested in both social and financial return on investment
Develop and/or adapt evaluation tools and approaches for innovative finance and market-based models
Strengthen the ability of individuals and organizations to assess and evaluate social impact in this rapidly emerging area.

We see ourselves as bridge-builders, connecting the evaluation community with the corporate philanthropy, impact investing and social entrepreneurship sectors.

As we close out 2024, we’re proud of everything we’ve accomplished and excited to step into 2025 with renewed energy and new leadership. Here’s a quick look at what we’re celebrating:

We changed our name! This year, we changed our name to better reflect the TIG’s focus on the intersection of social and financial returns.
Social Finance Primer – We launched the Social Finance Primer, an accessible resource for evaluators entering the social finance ecosystem. This resource will be featured in our final blog this week, so stay tuned!
Eval24 – We showed up at Eval24 with a variety of sessions that showcase the work being done in this arena. Many of these sessions will be covered in this week’s blogs.
Event with Mission Investors Exchange – We co-hosted an event with Mission Investors Exchange, demonstrating our commitment to connecting evaluators and the impact investing community
Webinar series – Throughout the year, we brought the world of social finance to our members, through sessions on place-based impact investing, maximizing learning in impact measurement and management, and amplifying underrepresented voices in business. Recordings are available here.

We’re proud of our programming, but we are even more proud of the community we have built since our founding in 2016. Here’s why we think our TIG is unique:

Dynamic and shared leadership: Our leadership is dynamic and inclusive, with formal roles that rotate annually and broad participation from members-at-large. This creates space for a multitude of voices where ideas can thrive, and provides plentiful opportunities for members to contribute throughout the year. Our name change, for example, was a collaborative effort that involved input from current and past leaders and from across our broad membership.
Our mission & vision: While we offer a place for learning and exploration, we are more than an affinity group. Our mission is to expand the practice of evaluation and impact measurement into spaces where it is needed, but often forgotten. This north star shapes everything we do, from representing at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) or SOCAP conferences to intentionally creating new spaces for collaboration and conversation.
Serious fun! You don’t have to be a social finance expert to join the TIG. We are a supportive and encouraging community, for learners and experts alike. And we have fun too, through WhatsApp groups, ice cream outings, dinners, and even karaoke during conference season.

We hope you stick around for our AEA365 blog week, where we will recap some of the great sessions and content from this past year. And if this sparks your interest, we hope that you will join the TIG!

Rad Resources

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Social Finance TIG Week with our colleagues in the Social Finance Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our SF TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.