In the January-March Issue of Beyond Profit, Sarah Gelfand, Director of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards(IRIS) at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), explains why the social investing sphere needs standardized reporting metrics and performance benchmarks in order to truly understand the social and environmental impact of investments.

From original article:

In the fall issue of Beyond Profit, Adrienne Villani wrote about an increase in charities using quantitative social and environmental metrics to describe their work. Transparency is good practice for all organizations, and it’s especially necessary for those that rely on grants and donation funding. But a new class of social entrepreneurs is discovering additional reasons for reporting social performance as they increasingly pursue blended financing models, combining grants with traditional business loans or equity.

The economic downturn caused many investors to question the full impact of their investments, leading more investors to consider social and environmental components of investing in addition to financial expectations. These “impact” investors are diverse, and have a wide range of financial expectations—from a simple return of capital to sub-market and even market-rate returns.

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