Impact Frontiers, a learning and market-building collaboration for investors seeking to manage their social and environmental impacts, today announced the launch of a public consultation draft of shared norms for impact performance reporting to improve the consistency, quality, and comparability of impact performance reporting. The public consultation document proposes and invites feedback on a shared set of expectations about the content, structure, and format of private market asset managers’ impact performance reports to asset owners and allocators, and about the criteria and standards by which impact performance reports may be assured or verified by third parties.
Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the initiative is informed by Impact Frontiers’ ongoing engagement with 100+ investors via specialized investor cohorts and other field building initiatives in impact management. Impact Frontiers has already received feedback from more than 70 asset managers, asset owners and other partners and held in-person convenings in New York City and Tokyo, all of which shaped the current public consultation draft.
Mike McCreless, Executive Director of Impact Frontiers, commented, “Impact reports are widely seen as burdensome by those preparing the reports, and as not particularly useful by those reading them. The draft Norms aim to reverse this trend, reducing the time and cost incurred by report preparers while increasing the usefulness to readers. Most importantly, the Norms will reduce ‘green-washing’ and ‘impact-washing,’ so information about impact can more consistently and effectively inform investors’ decisions.”
The launch of the public consultation draft marks the beginning of the project’s public consultation period, which will continue through the end of December. Practitioners are invited to provide feedback by contributing to the Impact Frontiers online discussion board, registering for scheduled interactive Zoom webinars via this page, and e-mailing responses directly to info@impactfrontiers.org.
Learn more about how to weigh in on this initiative during the public consultation period here.
