Looking for Social Finance Fund resources? Start here.

Audiences Community

Funders & Investors

Common Approach knows that for most grantmakers and impact investors, their first concern is not overburdening their grantees or portfolio companies. Common Approach is committed to helping you get the data you need without burdening the organizations you’re supporting. Our standards will complement what you are already using in ways these organizations will appreciate.

funder-investors-blue-reverse

How to align with Common Approach

Aligning requires only two steps.

You can do them in any order! However, we don’t recommend doing them simultaneously.

1. Ensure that your grant management system or internal data stores (i.e. Google Sheets, Excel) can import an Impact Data Capsule.

  • This normally takes about 8 hours of your time over 2-5 weeks. Costs will vary—anywhere from $0 to $25,000, depending on your system. Our Data Standards team is here to help you.
  • Once completed, you will communicate to your SPOs that they have the option to report to you using an Impact Data Capsule. Common Approach has user friendly resources to help you communicate this to them to ensure it feels like a perk and not an obligation.

2. Use the Common Framework to make sense of the data that your SPOs send you.

  • Our Common Framework team can help you test this with historic data before you commit to it moving forward. Contact us at info@commonapproach.org.

Common Approach is supporting impact measurement for the Government of Canada’s Social Finance Fund (SFF)

Learn more

User stories and case studies

Common Framework, Common Impact Data Standard, Impact measurement   Case studies and user stories, Research briefs

Impact evaluation of a portfolio of private investments

2 min
Common Impact Data Standard   Case studies and user stories, Videos

User stories: Grouping diverse metrics

2 min
Social Finance Fund   Articles

Reflections and readiness: evolving our approach for the Social Finance Fund

2 min

We want to acknowledge the contributions of the Social Funders Advisory Board. From July 2018 to January 2021, members came together to establish the inaugural Social Funders Advisory Board. Members included Canada’s leading grantmaking foundations and impact investors. They reviewed the Common Approach’s standards and progress with the needs of investors and grantmakers in mind. They were convened by Tessa Hebb, Distinguished Research Fellow, Carleton Centre for Community Innovation.