Impact data capsules

The easiest way to report impact data

A single file that holds an organization’s complete impact story so that:

➡️ Charities save hours of reporting to their funders.
➡️ Purpose-driven businesses complete investor reporting, effortlessly.
➡️ Grantmakers ease their own data collection and get more insights from their data.
➡️ Impact investors get asset level data that can roll-up into actionable insights

An impact data capsule contains an organizations’ impact results in a machine readable format, using structure provided by the Common Impact Data Standard, so any aligned tool or software can easily read and understand it.

It makes sharing information effortless by replacing rigid forms and templates with a flexible alternative.

🕜 Saves time and paperwork: Charities and purpose-driven businesses generate one file instead of filling out custom reports for each funder.

🫆 Preserves data meaning: Information moves between tools without breaking, fragmenting, or losing context. Even complex information.

📩 Supports diverse impact models: Whether the reporting organization is a local community food bank, an Indigenous youth mentorship program, or an affordable housing project, the capsule respects the choice of metrics while making them easy to share.

Get your capsule today

You have options! The magic of the impact data capsule is that it is so flexible, there are many ways to create one:

Common Approach Lab

A great first step!

Simply upload a spreadsheet or PDF containing your organization’s impact data.
Common Approach Lab will create your capsule.
It takes less than 5 minutes to create your first capsule! You can add more information whenever you like.
It’s free to use, and your data remains your own.

About 50% of our users choose Common Appraoch lab.

Use one of our aligned software partners

These platform offer data capsules along with other valuable features:

CRG’s Amplify supports grantmakers to collect data capsules as well as more traditional survey-style data colleciton. They offer sophisticated impact tools for complex programs.
threshold’s b.world has user-friendly tools to help charities and purpose-driven businesses get started on their impact measurement journey. Their software helps organziations manage and track impact.
Elysis integrates financial data and impact data for impact investors.

About 40% of our users choose to pay for an aligned software.

Build a custom integration

Work with data consultants, such as Purpose Analytics, or your own in-house developers, to build customized data pipeline automations that compile raw data into metrics and then into a dashboard and a data capsule.

About 10% of our users chose to pay for custom integrations.

An impact data capsule stores impact data in a “liquid state”, so it can adapt to any requirement easily.

Charities and purpose-driven organizations generate a capsule to store their data like water. When a capsule is shared, it pours seamlessly into any funder template. This saves time and prevents errors.

What’s in an impact data capsule

Data capsules are flexible—holding simple or complex information based on organizational needs—and can easily contain the varying levels of data complexity.

A typical data capsule contains:

The organization’s name and basic profile (website, address, charity or business number)
Intended outcomes
Indicators – qualitative and quantitative
Indicator reports

An organization with very sophisticated impact measurement might also include

A description of how each indicator is measured – including if a specific methodology or was used,, its baseline, targets and changes over time
Qualitative data, analyzed and supported with snippets
Stakeholder characteristics (such as income, location, household, gender, etc)
Results at different “levels” such as individual programs or funds