Common Framework
A flexible standard for impact measurement
The Common Framework allows each organization to choose the measures that are the most meaningful to their work and allows their funders, investors, collaborators and networks to aggregate those measures.
What is the Common Framework?
The Common Framework is a set of guidelines for SPOs, networks, investors, and funders to make sense of diverse indicators. It outlines a process for aggregating these diverse and dissimilar indicators to measure a group’s impact.
This transparent, replicable, and auditable process can be used with standardized metrics such as IRIS+ as well as bespoke metrics organizations create for themselves. This allows investors and funders to measure impact without needing uniformity from their investees, letting organizations use the metrics that matter most to them.
The Common Framework also allows groups to aggregate their bespoke indicators according to well-recognized frameworks such as the 17 Social Development Goals (SDGs) and the Canadian Index of Wellbeing.
The process outlined by the Common Framework has five key steps:
1. Group metrics by theme
2. Transform metrics into common units
3. Craft headline indicators
4. Establish rules and principles
5. Aggregate data
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The Framework is progressing steadily, thanks to the Pathfinder Pilot
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The need for a flexible standard.
While uniformity in metrics might make aggregation seem easier, it often comes at a major cost to the organizations doing the work. If their unique and important contextual information is lost, then the aggregation doesn’t accurately represent the organizational impact.
A flexible framework leaves room for more nuanced information and allows organizations to maintain bespoke metrics that match their unique work. This means better data and a lessened burden of measurement for SPOs.
Interested in the details? Check out the Flexible Standards Briefing.
How does it work?
The Common Framework uses three strategies, borrowing from different fields that use judgment to combine and aggregate non-identical things, such as financial accounting and qualitative research methods.
Construct-based equivalence
Grouping metrics by the concept they represent, regardless of different measurement methods. This allows for aggregation of diverse metrics around a shared underlying construct (e.g. food security, community well-being, healthcare access).
Bounded flexibility
Introduces guardrails to ensure the quality and reliability of construct-based aggregation. It allows for flexibility in choosing metrics but sets limits to ensure that aggregation remains meaningful and credible.
Documentation
Provides notes to the reader to explain the decisions that were made.
“I think one of the reasons why we struggle to have a standard in social impact measurement is we’ve been really fixated on the idea that it has to be measurement based-equivalence, rather than the idea of ‘these are just different ways of getting at the same idea; let’s focus on that idea’. Let’s focus on what it means to have a good job and let definition and measurement be flexible so it can be the most appropriate for that particular organization.”
Case study: Fund of funds
An example of the framework in use by a for-profit impact investment firm that manages portfolios for impact-focused investors.
