keen to hear more about what other companies, in microfinance, are doing
A3 - Not to end too glumly, but of 200 major companies in high risk sectors, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (www.corporatebenchmark.org) has found that half of those companies fail to demonstrate adequate human rights due diligence. This means there is no system in place to identify, understand, avoid and manage those negative potential and actual social impacts. Doing the work to understand what impacts are (or could be) comes before measuring or branding them. In summary - there are many of the basics that arenāt being done that are precursors to solving the metrics issue.
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The scale point is an important one. In addition to impact taking time it takes concentrated resources to do at scale. I think we often undermine our efforts when we spread resources so thinly across a wide range of issues and geographies.
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Wow important point. While the entrepreneurial marketplace has a friendly relationship with failure - social impact projects do not. That may be because of projectās high visibility - government officials involved - and other social pressures. We need a ātest and learnā mentality in social innovation to help drive more positive opportunities and successes.
However, even though I come from the private sector, I still believe that a more cautious approach to testing is important in social impact projects. We are dealing with human lives - and not software.
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I think what is missing is a widespread understanding of the great data standards and practice standards that already exist - and clear support and guidance for enterprises to navigate between these. I.e. from their goals - to relevant principles - to relevant metrics and guidance - to templates for consistent and transparent reporting.
More work is need to bring together the social and environmental thresholds and context that businessā can use to assess their impact performance (e.g. living wages in different contexts, SDG priorities in each country etc)
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There can be challenges in getting companies comfortable recognising that they can have negative social impacts - not only positive ones - and transparently reporting on how they are avoiding/ mitigating risks and actual/ potential impacts
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Increased coordination & collaboration. Couldnāt agree more. There is great work already being done. Wonderful standards already developed.
Shared data governance is ambitiousā¦but even the ability to find āconnection pointā to be able to link data insights would be very helpful. We struggle to do so.
We have applied shared data governance practices internally, but, on a sector levelā¦ no resources for that!
Oh there are some great resources for more sector-wide data governance! It is starting to happen. Definitely check-out Brighthive.ioās work. Itās not going to happen across the whole social sector all at once. But starting to connect impact data providers and service providers for example in particular subsectors and geographies.
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Agreed. But I honestly think we have come to a point where there are more frameworks, standards, certifications, etc. than actual companies reporting on itā¦ We need the enterprises to be on-board and start sharing.
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Agree - there is a profound governance issue that underlies the transition to an āimpact economyā ā¦a common data architecture is needed, but this needs to be a common good and data (social in particular) needs to be protected.
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In addition to the positive and negative, we need to talk about intended and unintended. We only measure impact where we look. Is our lens wide enough?
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I share your struggle with attribution! We fare better when we frame impact measurementās purpose as a practice for understanding what effects are being contributed to instead of the urge to make claims.
What do you see as the barrier to adoption, Stephanie? (and also, hi! - great to reconnect!!)
There is a real feeling from reading the comments that there is a definite split between those who see social impact as inherently positive (do more) and those who see it as potentially negative as well (accentuate +ve, eliminate -ve).
Sensibility is not the only issueā¦ we just canāt afford it! Impact does not necessarily imply ābusiness valueā, it may, but that is not always the case. So itĀ“s about efficiently allocating resources to maximize impact. How do we do that effectively?
A challenge I often hear from companies is that they are reporting a lot of data but no one reads it. How can we make social impact data more accessible/ useable?
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Would be happy to share, please get in touch! www.businesscalltoaction.org
Very important point - hence the need for a hollistic approach before we even start to measure, to make sure we measure what matters in the first placeā¦
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Totally agree! The IMP community landed on āenterprise contributionā and āinvestor contributionā as being more practical and measurable than attribution.
Attributing change doesnāt always give us insightful data to use for impact management but trying to figure out what our contribution is to the existing market landscape (be it wages or products and services) is highly practical and commercially useful!
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