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A Shared Destination: Why we need open source impact metrics
Developers of impact measurement systems should provide an open repository of metrics and allow other users to customize them to their own context and needs. Such systems would also allow users to easily frame goals and build standard-based reports accordingly. Only with shared best practices and collaboration among the organizations will the social sector be able to produce a higher impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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GIIN Releases Updated Version of IRIS Catalog, IRIS 4.0
An updated version of the IRIS catalog, IRIS 4.0, has been released! With greatly enhanced guidance on how investors should use IRIS metrics and a new metric component— the footnote— IRIS 4.0 provides investors with clear instructions and examples that enable consistency in data collection, management, and reporting across the market. The updated catalog also features metric additions and improvements to measure the performance of investments in agriculture, education, financial services, forestry, housing, community development, and land conservation.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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MaRS Catalyst Fund Seeks Startups With Both Social Impact and Financial Returns
The MaRS Catalyst Fund, a national impact venture fund, has raised $3 million and plans to raise a total of $5 million, which will be used to invest in early-stage Canadian startups tackling social and environment issues with potential for profit.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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See Impact Investing As Part of An Evolution Towards a Fairer Society: Ronald Cohen
Ronald Cohen, one of the pioneers of private equity in Europe who set up and ran investment group Apax Partners for 33 years, has turned into an evangelist for social enterprises. The 70-year-old, currently chairman of The Portland Trust and Bridges Ventures, believes that impact investing -which looks at both financial and social returns -can be a game changer for social development. Cohen, with more than $55 billion of global assets under management, is in India to meet investors, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs. In an interview with ET, he talks about the global trends in the social investment space.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- impact investing
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What Motivates Companies to Do Good—Altruism, or Guilt?
Talk of doing society good is by now a standard component of American companies’ messaging. Whether they meet that stated goal is another matter, but still, the impetus for it all is still a bit mysterious: Why have multi-billion-dollar firms invested so heavily on corporate social responsibility, or CSR, programs in the last few decades? Are firms engaging in socially conscious behavior for honest reasons, or simply to direct attention away from some of their more harmful behaviors?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Mobile Data Has the Answers, But First, We Need to Ask the Right Questions
I’ve realized that when guiding social enterprises, nonprofits and international NGOs to begin using data, it’s helpful to focus on a key, sometimes obvious point: data has to actually answer a critical business or programmatic question. Mobile data collection for the sake of collecting data isn’t enough.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- research
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Graduating Out of Extreme Poverty in Haiti … Permanently
Six years ago, microlending firm Fonkoze launched Chemin Lavi Mio, or the "pathway to a better life," pilot program. CLM is designed to move women and their families out of extreme poverty – permanently. It provides support over the course of 18 months through a carefully tailored package of asset transfers, improved housing and sanitation, water filters and, importantly, weekly visits that provide mentoring and guidance. Anton Simanowitz returns to Haiti to check on the poverty "graduation" effort as it looks to scale.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Evaluation that Creates Value for Participants: A Client-Centric Approach
Too often, the process of collecting data to evaluate impact, regardless of the intent, feels extractive to the research participants. Extractive industries are those that obtain natural resources from the earth without provision for the potential negative consequences of extraction. Similarly, some evaluations extract data from disadvantaged communities without providing any benefit in return. How Root Capital has taken a more client-centric approach.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- research
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