About Us
As of February 2025, Positive Impact has a community of almost 2,000 global event professionals, over 40 corporate Head of Events, over 40 Corporate Head of Sustainability, over 160 SMEs with a Race to Zero commitment, over 5 memorandums of understanding with United Nations bodies.
For almost 20 years not for profit Positive Impact have been providing engagement, collaboration and education to create a sustainable event industry. You could describe Positive Impact as the ‘critical friend’ of the global event sector.
In 2023 we began to focus on bringing needed innovation to life by supporting two projects:
Technology to make it easier for your event to have a positive Impact
Positive Impact is the only event sector body to be a Race to Zero Accelerator, UN SDG Action mobiliser and to have education certified by the world’s largest and leading CPD accreditation working across all sectors, so our education is accessed by heads of marketing, HR and sustainability.
Our funding comes from everywhere and nowhere, and every penny, cent or yen is used to advance the event sector so every time an event happens the UN Sustainable Development Goals are advanced and events are recognised as ensuring 'participation and inclusion in decision making’ (UN SDG16).
This is a timeline of Positive Impact's journey and the creation of a sustainable event industry. It reflects initiatives from:
The United Nations
Positive Impact
CEO Fiona Pelham
Key developments in the creation of a sustainable event industry.
Presenting at the UN SDG Global Festival of Action on how events are a route to achieving the SDGs
Positive Impact’s CEO, Fiona Pelham, hosted a presentation at the 2019 SDG Global Festival of Action sharing stories of how events are used to change the world. These stories also shared actions people could take so they left the room inspired and ready to take action.
Celebrating Earth Day with #CSRshareDay
Positive Impact Events curated a 24 hour collaboration by event professionals around the world to share best practice examples of sustainable events on social media.
Researching the top 10 ways to reduce your event's carbon footprint
Positive Impact worked with Project Drawdown to research the 10 best ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your event to help achieve our vision of a sustainable events industry.
Hearing from school strikers for Global Meetings Industry Day
This year Positive Impact celebrated Global Meetings Industry Day by hosting a webinar with a number of children in England, Scotland and Hong Kong who took part in the school strikes for climate. We also asked industry leaders to ‘Pledge for Change’ to be a part of the solution, not the problem. Almost 40 industry leaders signed this pledge.
Asking businesses to be part of creating a sustainable event industry
In 2019, Positive Impact created a microsite which set out the ways that companies could get involved with the creation of a sustainable event sector.
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2019 with our Girls Creating campaign
In 2019, Positive Impact celebrated International Women’s Day with our annual Girls Creating Campaign. Positive Impact held a webinar and created an interview series with leading women in the event industry.
SDG Acceleration Actions platform launched
The Political Declaration of the 2019 UN SDG Summit stressed the urgent need for concerted, accelerated action by all stakeholders at all levels to achieve the 2030 Agenda. In the lead up to the SDG Summit, an online platform was created to capture new and ambitious SDG Acceleration Actions.
Growing our ambassador community in 2018
In 2018 our ambassadors grew to 267 ambassadors. We provided our ambassadors with 3 powerpoints to engage their communities on the UN SDGs. August’s theme was on SDG 13, 10 AND 11. We also sent our ambassadors monthly challenges related to a UN SDG. You can see June’s challenge here.
Collaborating with Finland’s largest convention centre to implement ISO 20121
Positive Impact worked with Messukeskus to support their implementation of ISO 20121.
Reaching over 500,000 for World Peace Day 2018
Positive Impact celebrated World Peace Day by creating a campaign to share knowledge and wisdom on creating safe, peaceful event spaces. This included a series of 6 webinars. Speakers included UNFCCC and the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Our 2018 World Peace Day campaign reached over 500,000.
UN Collaborations
Positive Impact begins to sign Memorandum of Understanding with UN bodies (including UN Environment, UNFCCC, UN SDG Action) to enable increased collaboration and conversations on events. Collaboration begins with Unicef UK on guidelines for planning an event with consideration of human and child rights.
Highlighting the risks of action around sustainability in CIM Magazine
Positive Impact’s CEO Fiona Pelham was interviewed for Conference & Incentive Management magazine and spoke about her mission to make the event industry more sustainable and why taking action is so important.
Celebrating Earth Day with #CSRshareDay
Positive Impact Events curated a 24 hour collaboration by event professionals around the world to share best practice examples of sustainable events on social media.
Reporting on sustainability at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games
The purpose of this report is to share learnings and inspire future events on how to implement a sustainability strategy which meets the guidelines of ISO 20121.
Creating a toolkit for the event industry to #shareapositiveimpact
We asked the event industry to help us reach 2 Million shares of our #shareapostiveimpact campaign by December 2018. As part of this goal, we created a free toolkit that could be downloaded to make it easier for anyone to share an example of sustainability best practice in the event industry.
Sharing stories of collaboration for #GMID18
Positive Impact hosted a webinar for #GMID18 with IBTM and Caesars Entertainment on how collaboration can build a more powerful and sustainable events industry.
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2018 with our Girls Creating campaign
In 2018, Positive Impact celebrated International Women’s Day with our annual Girls Creating Campaign. Fiona wrote a blog on how the importance of women in making history.
Engaging with UN Environment to leverage sustainable procurement practices
Collaboration with UN Environment to understand what sustainable procurement practices created to transform tourism value chains could mean for events.
Creating a sustainability charter for SITE
In January 2018, the SITE Foundation provided a grant to Positive Impact to support the creation of a sustainability charter for SITE.
Providing opportunities for collaboration between the UN and event industry
UN representatives were invited to IBTM World to meet event industry leaders and associations to discuss the role of events in achieving the UN SDGs. The Event Industry Council, Joint Meeting Industry Council and their member associations were invited to meet - only 3 association representatives attended.
