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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.
- Categories
- 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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Viewpoint: Learning from Financial Inclusion Research: What Should We Expect?
There is a real puzzle in the world of financial inclusion: Where’s the impact? The question is not unique to financial inclusion, but it is a particularly pressing one.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment
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From Counting Women to Valuing Women: Practical Impact Measurement Tools for Complex Contexts
The old way of measuring the gender equality of a company or program consisted of simply counting women – from the number of female employees and clients, to the number of women beneficiaries and board members. The new way is all about valuing women by collecting data on how they are impacted by a company or program. Rebecca Baylor at WDI's Performance Measurement team provides some concrete strategies for gender-based impact measurement and management.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Why Aren’t More Social Enterprises Measuring Impact? A New Study in South Africa Raises Questions for the Global Sector
South Africa has arguably the most mature impact ecosystem in Africa, with both seasoned and new social enterprises, incubators, accelerators and funders. And a new study from Impact Amplifier and Genesis Analytics revealed a similarly robust impact assessment sector, with 72 percent of study participants claiming to have an impact measurement practice. But as Tanner Methvin at Impact Amplifier explains, those numbers contrast significantly with what his organization has observed on the ground. He explores that discrepancy and the broader findings in this revealing post.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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