Articles by Julia Mensink
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Guest Articles
Monday
October 5
2026Right-Sizing IMM: Five Ways Impact Measurement and Management Can Work for Enterprises — Not Just Investors
Impact measurement and management (IMM) systems too often reward compliance over impact, extracting more than they’ve given back. According to Julia Mensink at Acumen and Heather Esper at the William Davidson Institute, impact data tends to be focused mainly on satisfying investors’ requirements, not informing investees' decisions — and gathering it often ends up consuming enterprises' time and resources and constraining their ability to create the impact they’re expected to measure. They share learnings from a gathering of IMM experts earlier this year, highlighting several ways investors, investees and IMM professionals can right-size these practices, aligning them with enterprises' actual decisions and integrating them into their core operations.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Guest Articles
Tuesday
May 28
2024More Data is Not the Answer: Why We Need to Reset Our Expectations for Impact Measurement and Management
Impact measurement and management (IMM) is gaining momentum. As Julia Mensink at Acumen explains, while the sector was once underfunded and under-emphasized, it is now taken much more seriously — not only by impact investors, but also by mainstream banks, pension funds and corporations. But she argues that this progress has brought with it some challenges, including investors' growing demand for rigorous impact data, regardless of the challenges this data collection and reporting may present to entrepreneurs. She proposes some ways investors can work with social enterprises to shift IMM from a burden to a means to greater impact.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Guest Articles
Wednesday
October 28
2020How Should We Measure Impact? We Asked Our Investees.
Ceniarth describes itself as an "impact-first investor," but as senior impact manager Julia Mensink points out, even with its commitment and resources, it has found that there is no simple solution to measuring impact well. She explores what Ceniarth learned by asking all its investees how they measure impact, and shares key insights which may be useful to other investors looking to deepen their impact measurement practices.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
