Principle 1: Involve Stakeholders
Inform what gets measured and how this is measured, and valued in an account of social value by involving stakeholders.
The Common Foundations explicitly embeds stakeholder involvement not just as a distinct step, but as a recurring theme in each of its essential practices. Below are some specific mentions.
- Practice 1.0 – Describe Your Intended Change: Includes the best practice suggestion, “To focus on the changes that matter most… involve them in articulating your intended change.”
- Practice 3.5 – Act Ethically: Requires collecting data in a respectful manner, implying a duty of care to stakeholders.
- Practice 5.2 Choose Reporting Methods: Requires tailoring communication to the needs of different groups affected by the work.
Principle 2: Understand What Changes
Articulate how change is created and evaluate this through evidence gathered, recognizing positive and negative changes as well as those that are intended and unintended.
The following Common Foundations essential practices align with this principle:
- Practice 1.1: Describe the change you want to achieve.
- Practice 1.4: Describe the process of change. This maps directly to creating a Theory of Change or logic model.
- Practice 4.4: Review differences and draw conclusions. This practice asks practitioners to describe what changes have taken place, how, and why, specifically suggesting consideration of both negative as well as positive outcomes.
Principle 3: Value the Things that Matter
Making decisions about allocating resources between different options needs to recognize the values of stakeholders. Value refers to the relative importance of different outcomes. It is informed by stakeholders’ preferences.
While the Common Foundations does not mandate financial proxies (as in SROI), it strongly aligns with the intent of valuing what matters to stakeholders. Common Approach allows communities to define value in their own terms (e.g., spiritual, cultural, or communal value) without monetization.
- Practice 1.1 defines the “change you want to achieve” as “the change that matters most to the people and/or natural environments most affected”.
- Practice 2.0 states, “Be sure you know how the most affected define and understand success… and the relative priority of the indicators from their lens.” This explicitly asks practitioners to weigh indicators (which encode value) based on stakeholder preference.
Principle 4: Only Include What is Material
Determine which information and evidence must be included in the accounts to give a true and fair picture, such that stakeholders can draw reasonable conclusions about impact.
Common Approach recognizes that “materiality” is often defined by external funders, so its standards are designed to re-center materiality on what is useful to social purpose organizations and their communities. Common Foundations help avoid imposing burdensome constraints and encourage collecting enough data to act and/or learn. This prevents data extraction that doesn’t serve the community.
The following essential practices specifically capture this principle:
- Practice 3.1 states,” Decide what specific data will be the most useful to you. It explicitly acknowledges that It is not usually possible to assess all factors.”
- Practice 1.2 states, “Focuses on identifying results most central to the change.”
- Practice 5.4 advises, “Produce as balanced an account as possible.” This requires including negative results to ensure the picture is fair—a core component of materiality.
Principle 5: Do Not Over-claim
Only claim the value that activities are responsible for creating.
Common Foundations emphasizes that impact measurement is for learning and improvement, not just public relations. Common Foundations encourages avoiding giving disproportionate attention to only positive results. This cultural shift encourages organizations to be honest about their contribution rather than inflating it for funding.
Common Foundations Practice 4.5 spells this out succinctly, advising. “Base conclusions about impact on reasonable assumptions.” It asks practitioners to consider whether the changes would have occurred without their work and to consider factors outside of their work. This is a simplified, more accessible version of “Deadweight” and “Attribution.”
Principle 6: Be Transparent
Demonstrate the basis on which the analysis may be considered accurate and honest, and show that it will be reported to and discussed with stakeholders.
Common Foundations emphasizes accountability to all stakeholders through transparent and reliable communication. Common Foundations aim to be transparent, open-source, community-governed, and non-proprietary. Common Foundations encourages the same transparency from its adopters. This is specifically stated in Common Foundations Essential Practice 5.3: Report on performance and impact regularly, which explicitly calls for a transparent account.
Principle 7: Verify the Result
Ensure appropriate independent assurance.
This is a crucial area where the Common Foundations complements SVI. Instead of relying solely on expert third-party auditors, Common Foundations encourages data validation through participatory verification. Common Approach standards align with Indigenous Data Sovereignty, which recognizes that verification must respect the community’s data governance principles (e.g., OCAP® principles). True verification in this context isn’t an external stamp of approval, but rather the community’s agreement that the story being told about them is accurate and respectful.
As a minimum standard, Common Foundations does not mandate an external audit. However, it aligns with the spirit of verification through stakeholder confirmation. Practice 4.0 asks practitioners and organizations to allow those most affected to check whether their results are consistent with those they set out to achieve. Similarly, Practice 5.0 includes a suggestion to get feedback from those most affected, to learn how well conclusions resonate with their experience.
Principle 8: Be Responsive
Pursue optimum social value based on decision-making that is timely and supported by appropriate accounting and reporting.
Common Approach standards were created because we were hearing that SPOs felt the existing standards were donor reporting tools, not management tools for themselves. Common Approach standards focus on shifting power to operating charities. In the Common Approach standards, being responsive means that impact data empowers the organization to serve its community better, rather than just meeting donor reporting requirements.
The Common Foundations’ essential practices focused on responsiveness:
- Practice 5.1 states, “Use your impact data, or revise it.” This defines responsiveness as ensuring that organizations use the collected data to inform, improve, make decisions, learn, and/or act.
- Practice 4.2 states, “Data isn’t useful if it isn’t looked at and learned from.”
- Practice 3.0 is titled, Collect useful information.” The entire section is predicated on collecting only what helps the organization respond and improve.
