Society

Guidance that provides a set of minimum requirements that investors should meet to prevent negative social or environmental impacts.

Use this resource to:

• Implement: Act on minimum requirements for risk management, labour, resource efficiency, community, land resettlement, biodiversity, indigenous people and cultural heritage.

The IRIS+ Thematic Taxonomy provides guidance to impact investors on the IRIS+ Impact Categories and Impact Themes.

Use this resource for the following Actions of Impact Management:

• Strategy: Set an intention for impact using the IRIS+ Thematic Taxonomy of Impact Categories and Impact Themes.

GRI is developing standards for 40 sectors to compliment their current topic standards.

Use this resource to:

• Identify: Identify sustainability topics to measure using the list of topics listed for each Sector Standard.
• Measure, assess and value: Identify metrics to measure for each significant topic. The standards themselves provide guidance on selecting metrics to report.
• Communicate: Report to all stakeholders on ‘material topics’ that reflect the organisation’s most significant impacts. The Sector Standards are a helpful starting point for identifying likely significant impacts.

Report Assurance standard that provides criteria to assess the application of SVI’s Social Value Principles as evidenced in a report. Assurance is conducted acting in the interests of the affected stakeholders, an important distinction versus other assurance standards that are currently available.

Use this resource to:

• Assure a report that has been prepared in accordance with the Principles of Social Value. The Principles of Social Value and associated practice standards help organisations measure and manage the social value generated through their business activities. This means the assurance standard is best applied to a report that has been prepared in accordance with the principles from the outset. The assurance standard is used to assess application of the principles, it does not assure accuracy of performance information.

This certification process assesses to what extent the Principles of Social Value are embedded in an organisation’s systems and processes. The certificate has three levels that set out a progression pathway for organisations looking to continuously improve how they optimise social value for their stakeholders.

Use this resource for the following Actions of Impact Management:

• Verification, assurance and certification: Certify that an organisation’s systems and processes adhere to the Principles of Social Value.

The B Corp Certification is an assessment process that evaluates a company’s social and environmental performance, as well as governance and transparency. Organisations that achieve B Corp Certification demonstrate a commitment to meeting a high standard of responsible business practices and accountability.

Use this resource for the following Actions of Impact Management

• Verification, assurance and certification: Achieve B Corp certification by meeting the standards set by B Lab, demonstrating a commitment to social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.
• Benchmarking and rating: Compare impact scores and metrics with those of other organiations within the same industry or sector.

These benchmarks rank companies and financial institutions based on their impact performance. The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) recognises that transformational change across seven systems (financial, decarbonisation and energy, food and agriculture, digital, social, urban, and nature) are needed to achieve sustainability. In each of these systems, companies that have a big role to play in hindering or advancing progress towards a sustainable future are identified as ‘keystone’ companies. The WBA then draws from existing standards to develop a publicly available methodology for each system (or component of a system). The methodology identifies the relevant topics and associated metrics for companies to disclose against.

Use this resource for the following Actions of Impact Management:

• Benchmarking and rating: Compare performance with other companies ranked according to WBA’s benchmarks.

Guidance on how to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into reporting processes.

Use this resource to:

• Communicate: Use the guidance to disclose positive and negative contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Maximise Your Impact: A Guide for Social Entrepreneurs” proposes a practical approach for social entrepreneurs to understand and maximise the positive social value they create, supporting both the creation and development of impact-oriented organisations.

Use this resource for the following Actions of Impact Management:

• Strategy: Develop a strategy and business model that address the root causes of the problem that the organisation is trying to solve.
• Governance: Set the right governance structure and practices to serve the organisation’s mission.
• Identify: Identify the problems and solutions that the organisation will seek to address, including through qualitative research and stakeholder engagement.
• Measure, assess and value: Check whether the organisation has all the information it needs to assess its impacts. The guidance contains 10 questions that guide impact assessment, functioning as a checklist to ensure all necessary contextual information is collected.
• Set targets and plan: Create an impact goal (the core problem that the organisation is trying to achieve), set targets and forecast changes that the organisation is planning to make towards the impact goal and associated targets.
• Implement: Integrate information on social value into management decision-making.
• Monitor, learn and adapt: Understand how to use the collected information to decide whether to change, stop or scale-up activities, and learn how to develop a set of recommendations about adapting targets.

The Natural Capital Protocol is a framework designed to help businesses identify, measure, and value their impacts and dependencies on natural capital. It provides a standardised approach for organisations to integrate natural capital considerations into their decision-making processes, enabling them to better understand and manage their relationship with nature.

This is a cross-cutting resource, meaning that it supports the internal impact management process as a whole, rather than one or a few of the Actions of Impact Management.