The Navigating Impact Project
How are the Navigating Impact Project and IRIS+ making it easier to adopt JEDI investing strategies?
The Navigating Impact Project is where the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), alongside experts in different investment themes, come together to identify best practices, research, and recommended metrics for various identified investment themes, one of which is Racial Equity. Once these resources have gone through the IRIS+ rigorous standards development process, they are uploaded into IRIS+ and made available to a wider audience.
For the theme of Racial Equity, the GIIN has partnered with CapEQ PolicyLink, FSG, and JUST Capital to identify and develop three Strategic Goals representing common impact intentions that investors and enterprises may have, framed as Power, Risk, and Justice: shifting power by addressing racial bias and ensuring equitable representation and decision-making, shifting the perception of risk through equitable deal sourcing, due diligence and terms, and increasing inclusive capital to create equitable outcomes for communities of color (justice).
By navigating through these strategic goals, investors can find a research-based overview of the problem and how investments can work toward solutions, an evidence map, a starter kit of metrics that are shown to indicate progress toward that strategic goal, and curated resources that can help practitioners measure and manage their impact most effectively. This comprehensive framework depicts evidence-based outcomes and underlying indicators for the full spectrum of allocators, intermediaries and entrepreneurs to leverage and build their JEDI approaches.
What have been some of the challenges in aligning on common metrics and best practices?
IRIS+ is designed for a global audience, and so the Navigating Impact Project’s Racial Equity framework must have global contextual relevance. In addition, this theme is meant to be applicable for investors across the capital continuum, not just impact investors. Ultimately, the Racial Equity strategy elected to employ a framework which centers a discussion of power, risk, and justice because these elements can be interrogated in any regional, cultural, and investment context. An investor can use the materials provided in the theme and apply them to their own circumstances to better understand what diversity means in their environment.
How is the broader JEDI investing community involved in developing and feeding back on these strategies?
The GIIN has identified CapEQ and PolicyLink as expert partners in the Racial Equity theme to develop the scope of the theme, build a working group, and assemble expert insights, evidence, frameworks, and best practices, which are then brought to their working group for feedback. Once the Core Metrics Sets are standardised, they are then opened up to public comment for reactions and critiques of the Core Metrics Sets, metrics, and glossary terms, which are incorporated before the theme is launched on IRIS+. Involvement from the larger community throughout this process can take the form of:
calls and surveys on stakeholder priorities, needs and approaches
working group deep dives looking at draft overviews, metrics sets, evidence, and resources
public comment, webinars, and one-on-one calls with industry actors beyond the working group
Snapshot
Name: Navigating Impact Project/IRIS+
Type: Impact measurement and management system
Location: Global
Focus: Increasing data clarity and comparability, and providing streamlined, practical, how-to guidance for impact investors.
“Capital is often the rocket fuel propelling global inequities. In order to undo centuries of compounding injustice we must be proactive and bold with our investments”