Impact Frontiers’ Reporting Norms and 5 Dimensions of Impact and Common Approach’s community-driven standards provide impact investors with complementary norms and standards.
The Reporting Norms establish the shared expectations for what should be disclosed in an impact report; Common Approach provides the technical and operational tools to make that reporting possible. By using both together, the sector moves from manual, static PDF reports toward a dynamic system where transparent, norm-aligned data flows effortlessly across the impact ecosystem.
Common Approach complements these norms through two primary mechanisms:
- Common Impact Data Standard: This is the “technical engine” for the Reporting Norms. It provides a machine-readable way to organize data. When an organization uses the Data Standard, its information is automatically structured to make meeting the Reporting Norms more seamless.
- Common Framework: The Common Framework provides impact investors with a way to wrangle a smorgasbord of metrics into the reporting structures called for by the Reporting Norms.
- Common Foundations: The Common Foundations speaks to the quality of impact data that Impact Investors collect from their portfolio companies. The Common Foundations is a minimum standard for the practice of impact measurement. Impact investors can be assured that portfolio companies that meet the Common Foundations have good enough impact measurement reporting practices.
The Five Dimensions of Impact (What, Who, How Much, Contribution, and Risk) are made more actionable for both enterprises and investors using the Common Impact Data Standard and the Common Framework.
- While the Five Dimensions define the conceptual categories of impact, the Common Impact Data Standard provides the digital language to communicate them. It allows software to “tag” data points according to the dimension they represent.
- The Common Framework solves the problem of data aggregation across the “How Much” and “What” dimensions. In a diverse portfolio, organizations often measure similar outcomes using different indicators. The Common Framework uses construct-based equivalence to group these disparate metrics under shared categories. This allows an investor to see the aggregate “How Much” across their entire portfolio while respecting the unique, localized data that the enterprise uses to manage its daily impact.
Together, these tools move the Five Dimensions from a theoretical model to a functional, digital system for global impact management.