Aligning on Impact

As financiers continue to look beyond financial returns towards driving meaningful social and environmental outcomes, how are entrepreneurs monitoring, quantifying and communicating their impact? What are the best methodologies and strategies available, and how can entrepreneurs utilize these frameworks to effectively communicate their outcomes while meeting financier expectations?

Here are some global trends, frameworks, and metrics for impact measurement presented by Brianna Losoya, Senior Impact Analyst at ANDE. 

Why measure

Accountability

As the market is expanding and the number of actors growing, the need for accountability becomes a matter of aligning on skills, building confidence and meeting impact expectations. Truly measuring the actions and initiatives will help to assess performance and give a better understanding of the market reality.

Standards

All actors need to align on expected performance and create a track record. Having standards will facilitate analysis, benchmarking and classification to improve performance.

Value

By understanding the market better, identifying opportunities and challenges, measurement will be critical to informing future decisions and therefore create added value.

Some industry standards you may want to explore

• IRIS – GIIN
• PPI – Poverty Probability Index
• SDGs – Sustainable Development Goals
• GIIRS Impact Rated
• B – Impact Assessment^TM
• GOGLA Global Off-Grid Lighting Association
• Sustainable Food Lab
• Social Performance Task Force

Introduction to the Impact Management Project

The Impact Management Project (IMP) is a forum for building global consensus on how to measure, report, compare and improve impact performance.

They convene a Practitioner Community of over 2,000 organizations to debate and find consensus (norms) on technical topics, as well as share best practices.

They also facilitate the IMP Structured Network – an unprecedented collaboration of organizations that, through their specific and complementary expertise, are coordinating efforts to provide complete standards for impact measurement, management, and reporting.

Impact Management is an ongoing process of learnings and improving

1. According to IMP, our understanding and communication of our impact is based on dimensions.

There are five dimensions considered in evaluating the positive and negative material effects on people and planet.

The dimensions enable to assess:

• • what effects are experienced by people and planet

• • whether the effects are better than what occurs anyway

• • the likelihood that the effect is different than expected

2. Also our intentions are guiding the goals we set.

There are 4 broad types of intentions considered for managing impacts.

The work of the IMP provides a lens to understand the impact performance of different enterprises and investments against the SDGs.

Read more about the Impact Management Project

Event: The session on “Aligning on Impact” was run during the Leveraging Innovative Finance Together event, co-hosted with ANDE and organized for for Social Entrepreneurs, Financiers, and Intermediaries
Speaker: Brianna Losoya – Senior Impact Analyst – ANDE
Risk Panelists: Dondi Hananto  Partner – Patamar Capital, Jugnu Pati Senior Investment Manager – Bamboo Capital Partners, Nathalie Risteau  Co-founder and Director – Mandalay Yoma Company Ltd., Peter Crowhurst  Chief Executive Officer – British Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, U Saw Dino Ku  Executive Director – A-Bank
Date: 27 February 2019 

Related content

Access our Webinar on Impact Measurement and Management