Carrying out the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) calls for more than $90 trillion in investments by 2030 —half of which have to be provided by the private sector(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2015). At the verge of the private sector, the impact investing industry and mission-driven incubators and accelerators that are hatching high-impact startups in developing countries. While incubation programs are evolving all over the developing parts of the world with many policies embracing the conventional wisdom that mainstreaming entrepreneurship is a ground-up economic development strategy; few incubation programs make it their priority to develop specific impact measurements methods, or even develop a compelling theory of change about their social performance. However, with impact measurements becoming the center of the impact investing industry’s attention (So & Staskevicius, 2015). Impact investors are not only extremely drawn to methods for impact measuring and reporting, they more and more demand for a new understanding of the impact architecture— the impact scope and breadth as well as the rationales behind them. As yet there is no agreed models capturing the different dimensions of incubation and acceleration social impact and no agreed generic measure of social impact that indicates whether one mission-driven incubator has greater impact than another one, or whether one set of social impact metrics high scores can undeniably be considered outstanding results, the adoption of standardized metrics to measure social impact —such as the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) and the Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS)— seems to be a good place to start. Then the key to successfully integrate an impact measurement model would be to rely on high-quality and cost-effective data collection and management tools. Another important aspect to consider would be how organic the impact measurements and thinking need to be instead of a way to interest investors and donors, to really rip off impact measurement collateral benefits in terms of decision making and performance.
By najoua soudi
February 6, 2018