An interesting article by Micol Guarneri in Microfinance Insights:
| Elusive Impact or Concrete Change: How Social Performance Assessment is Helping to Change the Face of Reporting in Microfinance When chasing multiple bottom line returns in microfinance, attaining concrete evidence on social impact can often be cost prohibitive and time-consuming, not to mention difficult to segregate causality. Yet achieving more concrete evidence of MFI social performance is not as elusive as it once seemed. The evolution and importance of social performance management and measurement—for donors, investors and MFIs alike—indicates the growing consensus around treating social performance as a process rather than a static outcome. Micol Guarneri, the Director of the Social Rating Department at MicroFinanza Rating, discusses how social rating, complementary to the traditional financial performance assessment, is emerging as a tool through which an MFI’s social returns may be monitored and even benchmarked against best practice and industry standards. |