Based in Austria

wirkt. social innovation gGmbH

A For-profit with social mission

How This Works

As part of the TRANSFORM Support Hub, you will learn how to advance your career while getting hands on experience with organizations like this one.

Organization Details

wirkt. is a steadily growing portfolio of impact ventures. We create solutions in the field of education and inclusion, put them to the test and embed the most effective ones. In doing so, the impact ventures build on existing resources and on years of expertise to concentrate fully on making an impact. 

MTOP (start 2016) | https://mtop.at/

  • prepared 450+ highly-skilled refugees for the Austrian labour market
  • 65% of our participants start working in Austria

LANA (start 2020) | https://www.lana-frauen.at/

  • 50 LANA women in the inner circle (measured increase self-esteem)
  • from 12 different countries

Culture School (start 2020) | https://www.culture-school.at/

  • worked with 500 school kids
  • >90% of participants would recommend our workshops

Learning Circle (start 2020) | https://www.learning-circle.eu/

  • trained 80+ teaching coaches
  • measured, that 63% of school kids not only advance with their grades, but also show personal development

2023 a new venture will start in the field of “teacher support”

Impact Story

wirkt. aims at becoming the first venture studio in the impact field. In doing so, we can quickly test solutions and focus + scale those that have the biggest impact. 

The impact of our excisting ventures: 

  • MTOP: labour market integration for highly skilled refugees - SDG 8 & SDG 10
  • LANA: culture sensitive women empowerment circle - SDG 5
  • Culture School: culture sensitive school consultancy and workshops for teachers, parents and school kids - SDG 4
  • Learning Circle: digital 1:1 coaching for school kids, that is affordable for everybody - SDG 4

 

The set-up of wirkt. shall ensure the sustainability of every impact venture and wirkt. itself. We build upon 3 pillars:

  • The impact ventures themselves, which each have their own vision and mission. (MTOP, LANA, Culture School, Learning Circle and the newest venture in 2023)
  • The ideation lab, a structured design-thinking process to come up with new impact venture ideas in the field of education and inclusion.
  • The venture studio, the backbone of everything. All wirkt. ventures are supported in their work by the venture studio in finding a social business model, funding projects, or providing IT or HR services. They are part of the wirkt. Social Innovation GmbH (nonprofit).

How do we make sure, that the impact is sustainable?

  1. Building numerous impact ventures, we are quick in testing and realising if the impact model works.

  2. The venture studio helps us reach economies of scale within our service units.

  3. Impact ventures learn from each other and we become better with what we do with every new venture.

  4. Risk is spread among all impact ventures.

  5. Employees can switch jobs and start working for a new impact venture. So the ventures are not so dependent on their founding employees.

Diverse Social Enterprise

The TRANSFORM Support Hub is committed to accelerating diverse owned and led enterprises to build more equitable and resilient supply chains.

Women
Owned & Led