Let’s talk about how you may best demonstrate measurable impact for your business. As an Impact Founder and CEO your core values are centered on bringing about meaningful change, right? Well, Impact investors at a minimum expect that your business model is scalable and positioned for success, but it’s equally important to provide evidence that your business model can bring about powerful positive change.
But how do you measure powerful positive change? And if prospective investors ask you, how ready are you to share important data to show measurable impact?
Here are 5 keys to demonstrate your company’s commitment to creating measurable impact:
- Registering as a benefit corporation
- Becoming a Certified B Corporation
- Integrating a comprehensive approach
- Walking the talk
- Trade-offs
Public Benefit Limited Liability Company (PBLLC) – A Benefit Limited Liability Company or a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) are legal entity structures conferred by state law. To date, 38 states have passed benefit corporation legislation. Your company will measurably demonstrate its commitment to a certain type of impact with this type of entity structure, however, this will not help to measure your impact when it comes to your business model.
Certified B Corporation has a set of general measurements for your impact. However, if you have a very specific impact which needs specific data, this will not support you in gathering a very custom type of measurement.
Integrating a comprehensive approach will help you to decide what type of impact you want to focus on and how to define it as part of your impact strategy. The MetaImpact Framework offers a wider spectrum in terms of how to view and measure impact. They’ve defined four distinct classes of impact along with metrics and growth practices across ten forms of capital. We at The Change Agent Hub refer our impact entrepreneur clients to this robust and comprehensive framework, because it’s important to be clear about the type of impact that we’re designing our business models to serve.
The MetaImpact Framework differentiates between deep impact, clear impact, wide impact and high impact. These are aligned with different forms of capital beyond the obvious financial capital, and include everything from human capital to spiritual capital to social capital. Each form of capital is related and aligned with certain categories of impact. There are different ways to measure and track those different types of impacts so you can clearly benchmark and demonstrate progress toward your stated impact objectives for your company.
Walking the talk: The reality is anyone from potential consumers to fans, and impact investors in particular, want to know that you’re walking your talk. If you are going to brand yourself as an impact company and impact entrepreneur, you must in fact deliver on that promise. If bringing about positive social or environmental change is part of your business model and your brand promise, then you need to be powerfully demonstrating your company’s commitment to impact in every way possible starting with your own track record and profile.
Trade-offs: The ways to demonstrate impact discussed today swings both ways. You might have an incredibly successful impact company and not have any benefit registrations, certifications or anything related, and be one of the most contributing forces in the impact movement, and vice versa. A great example of this is Spoiler Alert, which works in the area of food security, which 50 million people in the US face on a daily basis. Spoiler Alert is a corporation and delivers impact through their business model without any of the designations that we’ve spoken about here. You can obtain all the impact certifications for your company, but fall short by not delivering the measurable impact expected by a company with those types of distinctions, and none of those impact certifications will mean anything. In fact, you will have tarnished the intent of these impact certifications and the impact movement itself. These are some of the trade-offs to consider. B Lab has created a scoring rubric that helps to circumvent a company not living up to its impact promise. It ensures that you’re walking the talk.
Want to get prepared to raise capital successfully?
Download our Free Fundraising Checklist Here: https://thechangeagenthub.net/fundraising-checklist
Once you receive the checklist you’ll be redirected to a video walkthrough so you can use this checklist most effectively. And you’ll also be invited to check out our 9-step fundraising preparation roadmap with detailed information called Impact Incubator Immersion. This program is the exact process all our impact clients have used to raise capital successfully.
