The Five Dimensions of Impact. Linking measurement, management, and the sustainability process.

Since 2016, the Impact Management Project (IMP) have been collaborating with over two thousand organisations in the industry to build a global consensus on how we talk about, measure and manage our ESG risks and positive impacts. The IMP found that understanding impact requires collecting data across these five dimensions:

 

  • What tells us what outcome the enterprise is contributing to, whether it is positive or negative, and how important the outcome is to stakeholders.
  • Who tells us which stakeholders are experiencing the outcome and how underserved they are in relation to the outcome. 
  • How Much tells us how many stakeholders experienced the outcome, what degree of change they experienced, and how long they experienced the outcome for.
  • Contribution tells us whether an enterprise’s and/or investor’s efforts resulted in outcomes that were likely better than what would have occurred otherwise.
  • Risk tells us the likelihood that impact will be different than expected.

 

At Insight Into Impact we build stakeholder engagement systems to measure impact in accordance with these five dimensions. Your stakeholders may include funders, investors, employers, distributors, customers, and beneficiaries. We analyse your engagement data using our proprietary model. This process enables you to make data-driven decisions that will increase your impact and predict probability of success of your projects and programs. To learn more, book a free consultation with Dr. Marcus Curcija today. 

In a recent interview with Rosemary Addis we discussed the 5 dimensions of impact and how businesses can incorporate this into their management.

Listen to the full interview here.

“If we want to be improving our performance, just like we do on the financial side of business or in other decisions that we make, we also want to be taking the measures to be informing what we do next. We want to be able to have the measures, telling us, are we making progress in the right direction, if not what do we need to prospect for; if we are making progress in the right direction; are there things we want to be doing more.” – Rosemary Addis AM

Insight into Climate Change – A Call for Projects

With half of the world’s tropical coral dead and 90% of the remaining coral projected to die over the next 30 years, Insight into Impact is making coastal community resilience a priority this year and we need your help. 

Insight Into Climate Change

With over one billion people impacted by the dying ecosystems and approximately $30 billion in annual revenues set to continually decline, cutting edge technologies and new scalable models are aiding restoration projects.

While a comprehensive movement to limit climate change is still urgently needed, many governments have not put forth funding to support reef restoration at the ecosystem-level.

The public sector has been the primary funder of reef protection and restoration efforts – it’s a huge burden to bear. As more countries move towards innovate “blue economy” initiatives, others continue to procrastinate. Meaning, donors and philanthropists are left with the bill. 

Fortunately, the private sector has been steadily growing interest in the reef restoration and backing tech companies that can make a difference.

That is where Insight into Impact comes in. We are interested in collecting data from community members and other stakeholder groups that are directly impacted by the slow death of the reef and/ or communities that are benefiting from some of the recent technological advances in reef restoration. With several projects on the books, we hope to compile a comprehensive impact assessment to aid coastal community resilience.

Please share this post with colleagues or contacts that are linked to communities impacted by the declining reef. Thank you.

To learn more  please email Dr. Marcus Curcija at mc@insightintoimpact.com.au or phone 07 3351 5440 today!

How to link CSR with the SDGs – A Circular Economy Case Study

How can organisations identify a targeted CSR strategy? Start by getting input from employees, customers, and the community (aka ‘stakeholders’).

How can organisations measure against the SDGs and improve their impact? Start by understanding how your stakeholders perceive your efforts and the challenges they are experiencing with sustainable practices.

How can organisations communicate their impact? By complementing traditional storytelling with graphs and flow diagrams that summarise the views of their stakeholders.

Case Study

SmileCo. wants to improve their corporate culture. They post a link to a third-party evaluation using their Facebook company profile. Upon clicking, their loyal customers are asked, “What issues / challenges around sustainable practices require the most attention?” After getting input from 327 customers across the state, SmileCo. learns that most of their market is concerned about waste and the depletion of resources and the environment.

Based on other findings in the dataset, SmileCo. learns about the positive benefits of circular economy practices. They then implement an aggressive approach to be zero waste by 2025 and facilitate sustainable consumption education in the markets they serve. They monitor the impact of their effort by periodically asking their employees, customers, and community members a few questions related to the SDG Targets. This process enables them to continually improve their internal and external operations, along with identifying new, innovative ways to market their products, which are now aligned to their CSR strategy and select SDG Targets.

To build trust and demonstrate transparency, SmileCo. communicate their findings using informative graphs and flow diagram that clearly show their effort to reduce circular economy challenges and enhance sustainable consumption benefits. They present these findings on Facebook, on LinkedIn, during presentations, in the Annual Report, and at expos, tradeshows, and at circular economy tradeshows. Their alignment, effort, and impact are clearly understood by everyone.

As a result, SmileCo. experiences a significant return on investment by retaining their original customers, growing their market share, and penetrating new markets through their radical and disruptive product offerings, which were previously unavailable across the state.

Third i Management’s Insight into Impact process aligns #CSR with the #SDGs by measuring and monitoring impact on communities, stakeholder groups, and those most influenced by environmental degradation or preservation.

To learn more  please email Dr. Marcus Curcija at mc@insightintoimpact.com.au or phone 07 3351 5440 today!

Why you should align your CSR with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal

CSR. Corporate Social Responsibility. What does Social Responsibility mean? Understanding social responsibility has, for far too long, been subjective. Social responsibility has been a guiding light for some organisations, a tick the box exercise for others, and an “unnecessary expense” for far too many.

Now, as many nations emerge from the confines of COVID-19, many more nations remain under strict restrictions, and the Black Lives Matter movement involves leaders from non-black affiliations speaking up and becoming active, a proportionate amount of organisations are listening and learning more about how to be present in the social aspects of civil society. Now, eyes have been opened and a greater appreciation of social issues appears to be coming to the forefront.  However, if an organisation were not responsible before, if they did not understand social issues and challenges, if their culture was not strong enough to do the right thing prior to recent events then how can we be certain that their offering is authentic? We can’t… But, what we can do is welcome them with open arms and assist them with transforming or formulating a corporate culture that resonates and prospers from Social Responsibility.

Many organisations are now asking themselves if they have what it takes to demonstrate an authentic offering? They are wondering if they have the right corporate culture in place to make the necessary changes needed to stay afloat in this fast-changing, long overdue shift in business philosophy? They now realise that CSR is not about ticking a box… it’s about a movement that benefits those less fortunate… It’s about giving back!

So how can companies and organisations start to give back? How can corporates build a sustainable, authentic culture that resonates with their market, their employees, their talent pool, and most importantly the communities from which they operate? There are countless ways… and they all start by listening to voice of the community! Community is where CSR starts and where CSR ends. It’s a cyclical process of listening, understanding, actioning, implementing, evaluating, and back to listening again!

 To assist with actioning, implementing, and evaluating fortunately, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exist to give organisations a focal point for their CSR activities. The SDGs enable companies to align themselves with goals and targets that line up with the voice of the community they are working in or serving or want to align their corporate culture too. Thus, the SDGs provide a new guiding light – beyond CSR but dependent on the goodwill and the financial contributions of companies that recognise and appreciate their good fortune and their social responsibility to give back!

The SDGs are also a means to establishing the corporate culture that is required – that will prosper – under this new shift in business philosophy.

To learn more about how your organisation can listen to the voice of the community and implement the SDGs into their corporate culture please email Dr. Marcus Curcija at mc@insightintoimpact.com.au or phone 07 3351 5440 today!

How do you stack up? Aligning with the SDGs

At Third I Management we are passionate about impact analysis; positive and negative.

The only way to drive change is to find solutions to problems. Raising awareness of any problem is one of the most important ways to make progress toward solving it.

In mid 2019, the WorldEconomic Forum commissioned Ipsos* to gauge the level of SDG awareness among the global public. It focused on familiarity with the SDGs.

Almost 20,000 people between the ages of 16 and 74 from 28 countries responded.

Globally, the survey finds that at a global level, three out of four adults (74%) have at least some awareness of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in Australia the level of awareness drops to 40%. How much further will we fall behind?

Achieving the 2030 agenda relies on a responsive approach to the voice and needs of our people. It is our social responsibility as individuals, organisations and companies to educate ourselves and our youth. It is time to provide equal opportunities for all citizens, and to take accountability for our actions by creating a transparent business culture. Together we can work towards long-term sustainable development.

As our friend and SDG advocate Indi Tansey puts it “The purpose of measurement is to better understand the world around us but the measurement of purpose, has the power to accelerate us to a better world”.

The 3i Management Model© evaluates social impact in alignment with the SDGs. To learn more about setting objectives and SDG targets, citizen-led reporting and/ or evaluate how you stack up please get in touch today.