From readiness to adoption: successes of the 2025 Social Finance Fund reporting cycle

We are seeing positive momentum in Data Standard adoption from those who participated in the 2025 reporting cycle. The numbers speak for themselves!

This year’s reporting cycle proved definitively that there is no single “right” way to adopt the Common Impact Data Standard. Whether you want to use Common Approach’s digital utilities, pre-aligned software like Amplify, or your own custom tech stack (Retool, Airtable, Excel), the Data Standard adapts to you. It operates quietly in the background without disrupting your established workflows.

“Our portfolio companies have no idea that anything changed. That’s a success. Like, that’s huge. We were able to work with the Common Approach team to adopt the Data Standard into our well established process so that what went out to portfolio companies was minimally different.”
— Elyse Crowston, Active Impact Investments

This year, we witnessed the true power of interoperability. Seven SPOs who were shared across multiple SFI portfolios were able to prepare one single data file and share it with all their investors. No more duplicated efforts. As the network grows, this “report once, share anywhere” capability will save everyone countless hours.

Setting up a new system takes effort, but the foundational work is now done. For returning organizations, 2026 will be a breeze—just update the values, run validation, and generate their impact data capsule.

Even better, new organizations joining the fold will benefit from the paved roads, tested tools, and streamlined resources developed this year.

“This year was a lot of learning and kind of just figuring it out so that next year is easy.”
— Morgan Brannon, Thrive Impact Fund

“The organizations that participated this year did more than implement the Common Impact Data Standard for one reporting cycle. They helped us understand what adoption looks like in practice—across different systems, different organizations and different levels of capacity. What we learned from them is already making the process easier for the organizations that come next, and we are beginning to see the ecosystem benefits that shared infrastructure can create.”
— Laurentia Perrin, Common Approach

If you are an organization participating in the Social Finance Fund who wants to learn more about how Common Approach is supporting impact reporting, please get in touch!