Dan Shine

Friday Roundup: Feb. 15, 2013

Happy Friday everyone.

As you may know, I am helming NextBillion while managing editor Scott Anderson is off tending to more important matters. I expect, or should I say I hope, Scott will be back towards the end of next week.

This is a good thing because I don’t know how much longer I can continue to do his job and mine. Good thing I get to collect my salary and his for the week. (I guarantee this will elicit a NextBillion comment from my boss; I also guarantee it will be the PG version of what he’ll say to me in person.)

So while Scott’s elbow deep in diaper duty, let’s take a look at some of the good work on NextBillion from the past week.

Filippo Veglio of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) wrote a post Wednesday about its new guide to help companies and others measure their impact.

He outlined three tasks the guide helps ventures perform. These are, briefly: define and articulate the business case for socio-economic impact measurement within their organization; understand the essentials of impact measurement theory, and communicate with internal and external stakeholders on the subject; and navigate the landscape of measurement tools, and identify those that best meet companies’ needs.

At WDI, we read the guide with great interest since impact assessment is one of our core research activities. (Read here about how WDI’s impact assessment work blossomed over the years; and watch this video on our work.)

“The value of conducting impact assessments has increasingly gained recognition over the past few years,” said Heather Esper, WDI’s program manager for impact assessment. “WBCSD has done a great service in moving the impact assessment field forward by profiling 10 different tools (including WDI’s Base of the Pyramid Impact Assessment Framework). This guide will be a useful resource for everyone navigating how to conduct impact assessments.”

Filippo ended the post by talking about two opportunities to move the impact assessment space forward. Those are integrating socio-economic impact measurement into business performance management and reporting, and using socio-economic impact measurement to drive more effective collaboration between business, government, and civil society.

I encourage you to read the guide and give your feedback to the WBCSD folks as well in our comments section on NextBillion. What did the guide get right? What needs to be added? Leave a comment. Let us know.

Also published this past week was part five of Sateen Sheth’s six-part series on Impact Sourcing. The sixth and final installment will run Monday.

We also were introduced to TechnoServe’s updated brand. While that might be a slight change, the 45-year-old organization remains true to its mission to help those dealing with poverty. (I’d also encourage to watch the video linked to in the post.)

Village Capital unveiled its 16th and 17th programs in a post on Tuesday, and shared some key learnings from the first 15 programs it has run. Congratulations to our friends at Village Capital.

IMN also announced an Impact Investing Summit in March in Huntington Beach, Calif. I don’t have any further comment; I’m just daydreaming, on this (yet again) gray 30-degree day in Ann Arbor, of Huntington Beach.

In Case You Missed It…This Week on NextBillion

Good show! How an NGO convinced commercial TV to serve the poor
By Emily Ostrowski — Mercy Corps

Eight Meters Squared: A Colombian startup aims to help small producers at the BoP
By Alan Wagenberg

Paul Polak to Speak at the Latin American Impact Investing Forum: Feb. 20, 21 and 22
By Giovanna Sánchez Laposse

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