Across today’s impact fund portfolios, surveys have become the predominant tool for data collection. Whether using off the shelf tools, or ones developed specifically for the impact fund market, surveys are simple, straightforward, and inexpensive, and enable comparability and benchmarking across portfolios. For these reasons, we often see fund managers choose to start by collecting a limited number of key performance indicators (KPIs) across their portfolios this way. 

How to build and distribute a survey on Impactable

Build and distribute a new survey on Impactable in five simple steps.

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Step 1: click ‘Create New’ Assessment and give it a name and description. 

Step 2: set up your assessment by defining its reporting period, due date and any standard questions that will be important for filtering data later on - operational geography, or respondent company name, for example.

Step 3: choose the KPIs to be included in each survey. Filters for categories, various taxonomies or methodologies and reporting frequency allow users to easily find and select the most relevant KPIs. Users can easily add custom KPIs as well.

Step 4: Finalize selected KPIs by confirming their data type (qualitative, integer, percentage, etc) and marking them as required or not.

Step 5: Finally, build a list of contacts for survey distribution. Click ‘Add Contact,’ and enter a few key details.

Data Analysis

Once your survey is designed and distributed, Impactable will collect and analyze data automatically. Click on any metric and view respondent completion rate, an average and total across all respondents, and detail on the metric itself. Filters are designed to enable users to easily view fund, enterprise or geographically specific data.

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The limitations of using surveys for impact data collection

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Surveys are a great way to begin to collect impact data across portfolios, however there are two significant limitations that readers should note.

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1. They don't create any value for portfolio funds or enterprises, they create another administrative burden. Most fund managers we speak with want to eliminate undue burden wherever possible. Yet enterprises often find themselves needing to respond to multiple surveys from each investor on their cap table, each requesting different data. Surveys are purely extractive. Respondents rarely even get the benefit of seeing the results to understand how they compare to their peers. 
2. Surveys do not account for variability across diverse portfolios. Every portfolio company must provide the same KPIs, even if they're not relevant or meaningful.  Even with an impact thesis focused on one vertical - climate, healthcare or workforce development - a portfolio of ten different companies will likely take ten different approaches to solving a problem and therefore could require ten different metrics. Surveys cannot account for this variability.  Fund managers prescribe the KPIs for their portfolio companies and run the risk of underrepresenting the impact their portfolio companies unlock. 

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Impactable addresses these limitations by offering impact modeling to all portfolio companies - wherein each portfolio company may choose the metrics that are most meaningful and strategic for them -  and then aggregating the outcomes and summary analytics across diverse portfolios.  Contact us to learn more!

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Want to get started?

Surveys are a powerful tool for investors, providing valuable insights and fostering transparency. 

Ready to see how Impactable can revolutionize your impact data collection? Schedule a demo call with us and take a step towards more impactful investing.