Impact Reporting and Investment Standards

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= The IRIS Framework aims at Creating a Common Language for Assessing Social and Environmental Impact (of investments and projects)

URL = http://iris.thegiin.org/ [1]


Definition

" Creating a common language for reporting social and environmental impact.

Impact Reporting & Investment Standards, or IRIS, is a common language for describing the social and environmental performance of an organization. IRIS provides an independent and credible set of metrics for organizations to use when reporting their impact. IRIS indicators span an array of performance objectives and include specialized metrics for a range of sectors including financial services, agriculture, and energy. Like financial accounting standards, IRIS provides a basis for performance reporting and organizations need only report on applicable metrics from the IRIS library." (http://iris.thegiin.org/)


Description

"The Impact Reporting and Investment Standards is a major project of the GIIN's infrastructure development initiative. One of the limitations to the growth of the impact investing industry is the lack of transparency and credibility in how funds define, track, and report on the social and environmental performance of their capital. This leads to higher transaction costs and a limited ability to understand the impact of investments.

To address these challenges, the GIIN is expanding upon work initiated by The Rockefeller Foundation, Acumen Fund, and B Lab to develop and promote a common framework for reporting the performance of impact investments. The group, in collaboration with other impact investors and industry experts, has developed a standard set of performance measures for describing social and environmental performance that facilitates comparisons of impact data across investments. The project is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Rockefeller Foundation, and builds on prior work in the social impact assessment field. Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers are providing technical support for the IRIS initiative.

A common social and environmental vocabulary also enables the aggregation of data from different providers and data collection systems. Organizations that adopt the IRIS definitions for their impact reporting can contribute data to the GIIN, which will produce industry-wide benchmarks and support related analysis by intermediaries, principal investors, academics, and enterprises themselves." (http://www.thegiin.org/cgi-bin/iowa/reporting/index.html)


More Information

For more information about IRIS and to view the IRIS standards, please refer to iris.thegiin.org