DEFINING IMPACT
How can I measure impact of my investments?
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Measuring, monitoring and reporting on gender impact are vital to ensuring that investments deliver the intended benefits for young women and girls. Doing so in a way that is meaningful to investors and useful to investees requires careful planning and coordination. The ideal reporting process is the one in which the investor and investee work together to determine how to measure success, and data generated are useful for managing business performance as well as impact.
- TOOLS
Defining success
Measuring impact begins with defining success. What changes should a venture’s solution bring about for users? For girls and young women in particular?
SPRING focuses on business solutions that can empower adolescent girls through five critical impact areas: learning, earning, saving, being healthy and staying safe.
Theory of Change
A Theory of Change (ToC) is a tool for articulating a vision of change, and mapping how the change should come about. Investors and investees may use a ToC to conceptualise the chain of events between a business solution and its intended social impact.
SPRING works with businesses to develop a ToC with a gender lens, highlighting how a product or service will reach and benefit girls and young women specifically. There is no one right way to create a ToC, though for simplicity, SPRING uses a common template.
Underpinning every ToC is a set of assumptions – conditions which must be in place for the impact to be realised. Human-centred research, aimed at uncovering the needs and realities of users, can play an important role in testing assumptions.
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Selecting metrics and data collection methods
After outlining a vision for change and impact pathways in a ToC, the next step in the measurement process is to select relevant metrics and data collection methods. Key considerations include feasibility of collection method (what is the business able to do, given its stage of development and level of resources?), and usefulness of the data (will the information help inform business strategy or product development?). As far as possible, metrics should align with industry standards, such as those in the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) IRIS catalog.
Miller Centre is the largest university-based social enterprise accelerator in the world. “At Miller Centre, an area of focus is on women’s economic empowerment – that means supporting women social entrepreneurs and/or entrepreneurs supporting women and girls in terms of products and services. Depending on the stage of the enterprise, our focus on impact measurement is treated differently. For our earlier stage entrepreneurs who are in the validation stage of their product-market fit, we work with them to measure their outputs. We do help them think about their outcomes, but we don’t help them figure out how to measure yet. Being sophisticated about measuring impact at the validation stage does not justify the time and resources they need to spend on it. It is important for them just to do the basics – count how many girls, how many jobs created, etc. At the later stage, organizations that are scaling, we start to help them to think more sophisticatedly about outcomes and how to measure them. It is all about measuring what’s proportionate at the right time.”
– Miller Centre’s Chief Innovation Officer, Pamela Roussos
To understand the gender impact of products and services, metrics typically focus on two types of results:
- How many (and which) girls and young women are being reached? Metrics may include the total number of girls and young women reached and/or the proportion of users who are girls and young women. These output metrics require businesses to collect gender-disaggregated data.
- What changes in the lives of girls and young women result from interacting with the business solution? These may be immediate or longer-term changes or outcomes.
For a list of sample ‘girl impact’ metrics used by SPRING businesses, click here.
For more on the difference between outputs and outcomes, click here.
Once social performance metrics have been decided, appropriate data collection methods may be selected. Options range from simple surveys and focus groups to more complex controlled research studies. The method used has implications not only for costs (more robust methods generally cost more), but also for the level of confidence investors can have in the results. Nesta’s standards of evidence provide a useful framework to help investors calibrate expectations around impact evidence in line with investees’ stage of development.
Acumen’s Lean Data approach seeks to measure social performance in a ‘lean’ way, balancing rigour with practicality, and leveraging mobile data collection methods.
To see how SPRING ventures have used a Theory of Change to guide impact measurement, please click the following links:
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Depth and breadth of impact
A Theory of Change is useful for defining the type of impact a business solution can achieve for girls and young women. For a more complete picture of impact potential, investors may also consider depth and breadth.
The level of impact likely to be experienced by the girls and young women, ranging from insignificant to transformative or life-saving. Depth of impact relates to level of need as well as effectiveness of products and services.
The number of girls or young women likely to be reached by a solution.
To evaluate the depth and breadth of girl impact across a portfolio, investors may use the following portfolio assessment tool.
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Portfolio assessment tool
Portfolio assessment – depth and breadth of impact
SPRING purposefully invests in a wide range of ventures with varying girl impact models to learn from different approaches. In the bubble diagram below, breadth is represented on the x-axis and depth on the y-axis, with colour-coded icons to indicate the impact category. Businesses whose products, services and business models can make a potentially transformative difference for girls (e.g. by providing access to safe earning, significant skill-building opportunities or first-time access to contraception) are rated higher on the y-axis, while ‘nice to have’ products and services, with benefits such as greater convenience, are rated lower.
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The degree of focus on girls and young women
In addition to the breadth and depth of impact, investors may assess the extent to which business solutions focus intentionally or specifically on girls and young women, which could mean exclusive impact, disproportionate impact or equal (gender) impact. It may be helpful to look separately at three different aspects of gender focus:
The degree to which the social problem being addressed disproportionately affects girls and young women (e.g. teenage pregnancy, unpaid labour burden). This is context-dependent. The burden of unpaid labour, for example, may be more pronounced and limiting for women and girls in rural settings compared to urban settings.
The degree to which the solution design accounts for the needs and preferences of girls and young women, and considers contextual opportunities and constraints. Consulting girls and young women through human-centered research can increase the likelihood that business solutions will reach and benefit this often overlooked user group.
The degree to which girls and young women are explicitly targeted as end users (through marketing and distribution strategies).
SPRING uses a venture assessment tool (see below) to rate the level of girl focus across these three dimensions. While the gendered aspects of a social problem are inherent to the problem itself and operating context, solution design and targeting are areas where investors may influence investees to adopt more inclusive approaches.
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Venture assessment tool
Venture assessment example: degree of girl focus (Fightback)
For each venture, SPRING evaluates the degree to which the social problem, solution design, and targeting are girl-focused or girl-specific. The figure below shows how this assessment was applied to Fightback, a Nepali security company offering self-defence training to girls in schools, aimed at reducing the risk of sexual violence.
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Gender and age disaggregated data
The complexity of capturing data on gender and age of users varies by business and impact model. Businesses with CRM systems or digital registration processes, and whose models involve direct contact with girl and young women users, may find it relatively straightforward. For others, with less advanced data systems or with more intermediaries between them and users, it can pose a significant challenge.
In cases where businesses are not yet able to routinely capture demographic data, informed estimates using census, sales figures and other available data may suffice. Alternatively, periodic user surveys may be undertaken. As with any type of data, collecting demographic data has associated costs and should be done with the aim of improving business strategy, not just for monitoring or reporting on social impact. If investees fail to see a connection between data and their business performance, it will not be prioritised.
Recommended resources
There are many excellent resources on assessing the social impact of investments, including some that focus specifically on gender impact. For further reading, we recommend the following: