Social Impact Assessment: The struggle is real

These days, a lot of companies struggle with impact assessment. While social mission drives 33% of startups, many social entrepreneurs struggle to quantify impact. Founders often lack an understanding of the levers within their business models that drive social or environmental impact, or the value they create as a result. Social impact assessments offer founders the tools to build businesses that reflect their mission, and offer powerful proof points for unlocking the $715 Billion impact capital market. Most social entrepreneurs want this level of clarity regarding their company’s impact operations but feel overwhelmed and confused about where to begin and how. Often, they expect the price tag for this work to exceed their modest budgets.

Impact Assessment For All

ImpactableX simplifies social impact assessment by providing a core impact modeling framework that generates verified, standardized and quantified impact analytics. Designed specifically for social entrepreneurs and their investors by an award-winning impact accelerator - GoodCompany Ventures - in 2014, ImpactableX provides a core modeling framework that allows founders to evaluate impact creation under various growth scenarios, and make management decisions that optimize for both revenue and impact. It can be applied to any business model, any impact vertical, and at any stage of development, and as founders evolve their sales estimates and collect primary impact data, they can revise the inputs to their core impact model to understand their broader consequences.

This approach to social impact assessment goes far beyond static snapshot quantification. It provides a consistent, centralized impact management tool that dynamically evolves.

Social Impact Assessment: Defining Impact

During an impact assessment, we guide founders through the three components of the ImpactableX framework to build their own impact model. First, we define a company’s core impact metrics - the measurable expressions of impact that capture the salient drivers of a company’s value proposition. Then, our impact assessment template will align these metrics with global standards like the SDGs and the IRIS+ core metrics to be sure we’re all measuring the same things and working towards aligned goals.

Impact Assessments: Calculating Contribution

Then we move into Attribution, where we evaluate a company’s “additionality” or contribution to a problem compared to a baseline. We calculate the change that is attributable uniquely to a company’s intervention. This step of a business impact assessment yields insight into both unit-level impact efficacy as well as the total impact outputs over time, typically 5 years. Detailed business impact analysis helps management teams to begin to see their company’s impact potential under various scenarios.

Impact Assessment: Economic Valuation

ImpactableX impact assessments allow social entrepreneurs to understand the full value their innovation generates. Social impact creates tremendous new value and cost savings, however, this value is not reflected in a company’s revenue because the impact is often externalized - experienced by a third party or the commons. The Valuation component of an iX impact assessment captures this value by calculating the geographically and demographically relevant cost savings and value creation catalyzed by an innovation. We can assess how, and to what degree, sales drive impact value creation.

Social Impact Assessments

ImpactableX impact assessments guide founders through the application of this methodology to their unique business models. We compute analytics that unlock massive opportunities. New technologies offer powerful tools to offer access at unprecedented levels for marginalized populations and strained resources around the world. Founders need to be able to articulate the degree to which their technology can affect change. This is no longer optional. According to the GIIN, 100% of impact investors consider social impact assessment metrics important during screening and due diligence. The founders who can articulate their impact potential with this degree of analytical rigor and have an ImpactableX certification mark will be the ones who will differentiate.