Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Small and Growing Business Metrics (from ANDE)

ANDE is a strategic partner of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) initiative. The network is using IRIS metrics as a standard, and encourages the use of IRIS throughout the ANDE member base.

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is committed to the development of transparent and consistent metrics to measure the impact of investing in small and growing businesses in developing markets. One of the ANDE governing principles is for all members to participate in reporting common social and financial indicators to help the sector build understanding of the work that is happening and to provide aggregated data to benchmark individual performance and measure the sector.

The required indicators only speak to part of the story of the work the ANDE members are doing and the effects small and growing businesses have. However, when looked at across the ANDE membership, these indicators form a core baseline and can begin to tell the story of the positive financial, social, and environmental impact that is derived from supporting SGB growth.

To learn more about ANDE's Metrics and Evaluation Efforts please contact Genevieve Edens at Genevieve.Edens@aspeninst.org

ANDE Core Metrics

Metric IRIS Metric Name IRIS ID IRIS Metric Definition

Revenue Earned Revenue FP5958 Revenue resulting from all business activities during the reporting period. Earned revenue is total revenues less 'Contributed Revenue' (Grants and Donations).

Employees Full Time Employees* OI3160 Number of full-time employees at the end of the reporting period.

Wages Full-time Wages* OI5887 Value of wages (including bonuses) paid to all full-time employees during the reporting period.

Additional Finance Mobilized New Investment Capital FP8293 Value of cash flows from the organization's financing activities (both loans and investments) during the reporting period.

GHG Emissions Greenhouse Gas Emissions** OI1479 Greenhouse gases emitted through organization's operations in tonnes of CO2 equivalent during the reporting period. Refer to International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emission factors. Leverage Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidance for this calculation. Footnote calculations and assumptions.

*For organizations who have a primary focus on economic development it is our hope that more specific measures will be provided on the type of employees SGBs employ. This includes part time, temporary, female, female manager, manager, minority/previously exluded employees.

**ANDE is an advocate of the TIMe toolkit, which is a step by step guide for entrepneuers to measure their environment outputs. In mid October, collection methodologies on how to measure GHG emissions and other resources on how to measure additional environmental outputs will be available for all ANDE members.

Potential Impact Areas of SGBs

Members should consider where the greatest benefit lies in the business it is reporting on. If the potential impact is based on the clients it reaches, the benefit of the product sold, or the suppliers it engages, the appropriate metrics should be reported. It is not necessary to report on clients, products and suppliers for all investments

Metric IRIS Metric Name IRIS ID IRIS Metric Definition

Clients Clients PI7094 Number of clients during the reporting period. Note: This is intended to capture the number of individual consumers served by the organization, not the number of consumer transactions. For example a customer who makes two purchases during a period would only be counted once.

For microfinance clients, this refers to active clients.

For healthcare providers, this refers to patients.

Products Units/Volume Sold PI1263 Amount of the product or service sold by the organization during the reporting period.

This metric should be reported in conjunction with 'Unit of Measure'

Suppliers Supplier Individuals PI5350 Number of individuals who sold to the organization during the reporting period.