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It’s Not a Diet, It’s a Lifestyle: Is Developmental Evaluation the Right Measurement Strategy For Your Organization?
Social enterprises working in emerging economies know it’s important to measure their social impact, but they often struggle to find the right approach. Like dieters looking for quick weight loss, they try one strategy or another – then grow frustrated when they fail. But according to Rebecca Baylor at WDI, there’s a solution that's geared toward the unique challenges these businesses face. Called “developmental evaluation,” it resembles not a fad diet, but a new impact measurement lifestyle. She explores this innovative approach, and how organizations can use it successfully.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Are We Actually Making Progress on the SDGs?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outline 17 areas where we need to make a collective effort and provide a useful sustainability framework for business and other actors. We have a decade until the 2030 deadline and businesses are increasingly committing to the goals in a public way.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Inside the Quest to Measure the Impact of Impact Investing
This is the kind of valuation challenge impact investors have been grappling with for years. Purely financial investments come with an accepted methodology for measuring return on investment. But with investments in projects or organizations working to deliver social or environmental impact, there’s no shared accounting framework for measuring the value of what’s been achieved.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Inside the Quest to Measure the Impact of Impact Investing
How do you measure the impact of reliable weekly milk purchases on the lives of small-scale Indian dairy farmers? What if you need to compare that with the impact on American college students of courses about dating violence and sexual harassment? This is the kind of valuation challenge impact investors have been grappling with for years. Purely financial investments come with an accepted methodology for measuring return on investment. But with investments in projects or organizations working to deliver social or environmental impact, there’s no shared accounting framework for measuring the value of what’s been achieved.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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The Impact of Equal Education: Solutions to the Gender Disparity in Sub-Saharan African Schools
About 132 million girls are out of school around the world, and the problem is fundamentally tied to gender. With issues ranging from child marriage to misperceptions about menstruation, girls face unique obstacles to education in many countries. Mark Buttweiler explores how Bridge International Academies is tackling the gender disparity, via a multifaceted, research-based approach that supports equality both in the classroom and the surrounding community.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Viewpoint: Can the Microcredit Model Be Improved?
Microcredit is frequently touted as an effective policy tool to fight global poverty. But studies suggest that the long-term impact on recipients’ lives is limited. Yale SOM’s Mushfiq Mobarak and the University of Chicago’s Vikas Dimble write that microcredit can help more people by modifying and extending its model.
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- Finance, Impact Assessment
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Press release: Cornerstone Capital Group Introduces New Framework to Measure Impact of Investments
The Cornerstone Access Impact Framework™ offers a new, proprietary approach to investing in alignment with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing, SDGs
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The Social Innovation Paradox: Why it’s Hard to be Both Innovative and Scalable
Feeling good about using an organic cotton tote bag for groceries, instead of disposable plastic bags? Research suggests that you'll need to use it 20,000 times to offset the high water costs of growing the cotton. That's just one example of the unseen web of impacts behind seemingly positive interventions, says Bright Simons, president of mPedigree. Interventions with more concrete impacts are more often penalized for their negative side effects, he says – but they're also more likely to scale. Simons explores the resulting paradox: The most scalable interventions become risk-averse, sacrificing innovation for growth.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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