The Way Forward in Impact Investing: Weighing Soulutions to Play Off Social Impact Measurement and Management

The impact investing market struggles are real, but they are not insurmountable. This white paper considers the challenges related to social impact measurement and management in impact investing and seeks to identify and weigh possible solutions for the way forward. The impact investing market has dramatically expanded, but not without any challenges: risk of contamination by the traditional form of investments, the proliferation of non-standardised and integrated standards and tools, and confusion about how to manage the social impact by considering a multitude of actors. The main challenges that remain to be solved include: confusion about which factors should be considered when measuring and managing social impact, difficulties in generating and collecting high-quality social impact data useful for decision-making, lack of alignment among stakeholders on the optimal timeline for measuring and managing social impact, social impact not being prioritised by many organisations, and a high risk of “impact washing”. Clearly, hard and soft law is needed to improve the measurement and management of social impact when moving beyond the “one-SIZE-fits-all” approach, which considers a single stakeholder perspective, to comns a multitude of stakeholders when designing and assessing impact initiatives.