Quantitative Social Metrics for Impact Investing. Sasha Dichter is the Chief Innovation Officer at Acumen. This post was originally posted on his blog. I have this nagging feeling of an elephant in the room – in the room of impact investing, I mean. On the one hand, we’ve made tons of progress. I don’t just mean progress in terms of more funds being raised and more mainstream attention – though those are both good things. (E.g. the World Economic Forum report’s recent definition of impact investing as “an investment approach that intentionally seeks to create both financial return and positive social or environmental impact that is actively measured.”)
While we’ve made progress on the language, I’m not sure how far we’ve come on the “actively measured” bit – mostly because it’s really, really hard to measure impact. Let’s not forget what’s at stake here though. Think about it: we have hard, objective measures on the financial side – or we will, as soon as more impact funds realize their returns. About the Author.
Social lmpact. Social Impact Investing Market Primer. BCG Social Impact. The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact. Quantifying performance and measuring results are no longer the sole domain of for-profit enterprises. Today, many nonprofit organizations also find themselves on the hot seat—not with stockholders but with donors who expect similar levels of accountability to show how their money was spent and what that spending achieved. Yet there has been little agreement on a set of hard-and-fast metrics to measure social performance. How should a nonprofit manager respond when a significant donor asks for proof of his or her contribution's impact on a particular social issue? “The basic idea is that not everyone needs to measure impact.” "There are two big conversations among nonprofit leaders," says HBS associate professor Alnoor Ebrahim. In two working papers that break down what makes social impact easier or more difficult to measure (one coauthored with HBS professor V.
Prioritize for accountability That isn't to say that measuring large societal change should never be attempted. Not for everyone. WEF: Impact Investment Sector. 5 Key Trends in Impact Investing.