An impact audit is a process through which a social investor or social investment fund account for their social performance to their stakeholders, and seek to improve their future social performance. Undergoing an impact audit can be a powerful strategic tool for an organisation.
What we do
We review how you factor impact into each step of your impact investment process. We will review your processes, policies, due diligence methods, decision-making tools and compare them to best practice. We carry out interviews with key members of your team and investees to see how your processes are applied in practice.
We help you identify areas for improvement and provide you with concrete recommendations to improve your processes and your long-term impact.
Your organisation is scored against best practice guidelines at each stage of performance in the different areas. This helps you understand your performance over time and demonstrate improvements when you undergo another impact audit.
At the end of our work, we provide you with a detailed report of your performance for each stage of the investment process. This report, which includes visual representations of our findings, is easily shared with your key stakeholders to communicate the results and findings of the audit.
We can also audit your investees' impact performance and can adapt our audit to best meets your needs and ambitions.
Our approach
Our impact audit is based on our best practice publication The Good Investor. We review and evaluate your organisation's social impact processes and benchmark them against impact industry best practice. Our impact audit examines the six key stages in The Good Investor investment process: Planning, Screening & Mapping, Analysis, Investment Decision & Deal-Making, Monitoring & Evaluating, and Reporting.
The impact audit framework finds its roots in the micro-finance and social impact sector and was in part established through the Universal Standards for Social Performance, USAID Social Audit Tool, and Social Audit Network. We have developed our own impact audit processes, and have incorporated key elements from these organisations into our service.
Why commission an impact audit?
Undergoing an impact audit can be hugely beneficial to social investors and social investment funds. Some benefits include:
- An independent view on how well you are following impact processes against best practice
- The identification of potential gaps in your impact process
- Recommendations for improvements
- Accountability to your stakeholders
Case Studies
