Social Performance Task Force from Microfinance is a best practice for Impact Investing

Summary

Ten years ago, the microfinance industry was exactly where the impact investment community finds itself now. We prided ourselves on the “double bottom line”—delivering meaningful social performance while operating on a financially self-sustaining, even profitable, basis. Great efforts were underway to measure financial performance. But—and stop us if any of this is sounding familiar—with a few notable early exceptions, no one was measuring social performance. No one was even defining the term. It was simply taken for granted that if a financial institution said it had a social mission, it was serving poor people well. In short, social performance back then, like impact investment today, meant whatever anyone said it meant.