In the world of microfinance there are social returns to be accounted for, in addition to financial accountability. Implementing a social performance framework to conduct such accountability assessmen...

The Global Reporting Initiative has been around for decades. It is widely used, but perhaps still not enough.

You might think that foundations allocate a considerable amount of their capital towards mission-related investing. You wouldn’t be rash for thinking this, but you would still be wrong. In this articl...

Superficial impact metrics  or simply copying and pasting IRIS metrics over your activities might be cost effective and make you feel good about the “impact” you seem to be generating.

The impact space is inundated with impact reports. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Donors and impact investors need to see such impact reports to be updated about progress year after year about t...

In Part I of this blog series we looked at the Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach to accounting for impact and some of the challenges involved in its implementation. In this blog, we'll share...

A lot of people try to get to a number for SROI Ratio and it misses the truth. The point of SROI calculation isn’t necessarily to justify capital investment, it’s to understand value creation through ...

A wave of social enterprise excitement has taken hold across the globe. The power of social entrepreneurship to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges has led to an explosion of interest in the d...

According to a survey by the Global Impact Investing Network, more than $100 billion worth of impact investing assets are currently under management. Every dollar of that investment capital represents...

In the United States, more than $1.2 Billion is spent just building nonprofit impact reports. And that doesn't include the time spent doing inefficient data gathering across disparate systems of data ...

  The definition of collective social impact dramatically differs based on the role we are referencing, e.g., impact investor, foundation, government, funding agency, program agency or practitioner. I...

  Outcome metrics or Impact Metrics are, put simply, results. The measurement of outcomes illustrates the kind of impact that programs have had on communities served. In this brief blog, we'll define ...

Lean Data, a term popularized by Acumen, refers to collecting high quality data related to social impact in order to demonstrate social change, and to do so with extremely efficient use of resources. ...

What are impact metrics standards? I like to think of each metrics standard as its own 'language.' Standards help us speak the same language as others in our network (i.e. stakeholders) so that we und...

The most important element to an enduring selection of Social Impact Metrics is the foundational impact framework that supports it. A strong impact measurement framework enables practitioners to defin...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have challenged both the public and private sector to amplify the outcomes of purpose-driven work, and in many cases to pursue SDG alignment. Part of this chal...

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data . When put in the context of social impact assessment, this wisdom from the inimitable Sherlock Holmes suggests that we should communicate impac...

What drives you to measure social impact? In the business of social impact, measurement has become one of the most talked about trends. And for good reason. The most obvious, of course, is because it ...

Impact measurement is a buzz-word in the social sector and no organization wants to be caught dead without a strategy in place. Despite growing excitement and genuine efforts, the reality is often dif...

Aggregation of metrics data is rarely discussed. In trying to further understand it, I have talked to several managers of UN-funded initiatives, foundations and impact funds. In most cases, even if th...