Global Impact Investing Network: Impact Reporting & Investment Standards

Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) is a common framework for measuring social and environmental impact of investments.

The Impact Reporting and Investment Standards is a major project of the GIIN's infrastructure development initiative. One of the limitations to the growth of the impact investing industry is the lack of transparency and credibility in how funds define, track, and report on the social and environmental performance of their capital. This leads to higher transaction costs and a limited ability to understand the impact of investments. Transparency, credibility, and enabling infrastructure are required for participants to more fully capture the value of the marketplace.

To address these challenges, the GIIN will continue work initiated by The Rockefeller Foundation, Acumen Fund, and B Lab to advance a common framework for defining, tracking, and reporting the performance of impact investing capital. The group, in collaboration with other impact investors and intermediaries, has developed a set of standards (taxonomy) that would facilitate comparisons of financial, operational, and impact data. The project has been supported by Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers and builds on prior work in the social impact assessment field while further developing and clarifying the means and metrics for enabling investment choices. The taxonomy of social and environmental terms enables the aggregation of data from different providers and multiple data collection systems.

Organizations with different management information systems can contribute data on a range of topics (including jobs created, local suppliers used, etc.) as long as they agree to the common definition and have mapped their own proprietary system to the IRIS taxonomy. The resulting repository of aggregate data will enable the production of meaningful benchmarks and related analysis for intermediaries, principal investors, academics, and enterprises themselves.

Version 1.0 of the IRIS taxonomy is currently being piloted by a number of leading impact investment funds. The taxonomy will be updated in early 2010, at which point we will be encouraging adoption by a broader group of investors and enterprises.

For more information and to provide feedback on Version 1.0 please refer to iris-standards.org

Related Project Efforts

The ultimate success of the initiative will require collaboration and cooperation from a great number of organizations. The challenges of this effort cannot be underestimated; neither can the potential benefits resulting from the more robust and efficient flow of capital with a social and environmental benefit.

IRIS is working in conjunction with other efforts, including Pulse, Acumen Fund's portfolio data management system, and the GIIRS rating system.