Impact management norms
From 2016 to 2018, the Impact Management Project (IMP) convened a Practitioner Community of over 3,000 enterprises and investors to build global consensus on how we measure, improve, and disclose our impacts. The resulting consensus (or “norms”) provide a common logic to help enterprises and investors understand their impacts on people and the planet, so that they can reduce the negative and increase the positive. Impact Frontiers incubated as part of the IMP beginning in 2019, and when the IMP concluded its five-year term in 2021, Impact Frontiers became the steward of the Norms.
In 2024, Impact Frontiers facilitated a social equity audit of the Impact Management Norms through a yearlong process of expert review and public consultation. For more detail, see Updating the Norms of Impact Management Based on a Social Equity Audit.
What is impact?
Impact is defined in the Norms as a change in an outcome caused by an organization. An impact can be positive or negative, intended or unintended.
An outcome is the level of well-being experienced by a group of people, or the condition of the natural environment.
Impact management is “the process by which an entity understands, acts on and communicates its impacts on people and the natural environment, in order to reduce negative impacts, increase positive impacts, and ultimately to achieve sustainability and increase well-being.”
Who are the Impact Management Norms for?
The Impact Management Norms are written from the perspective of investors and enterprises, who strive to understand and define impact from the perspectives of those experiencing it.
Other people experiencing impacts may have different values and see the world differently than investors and enterprises, which could mean they define impact differently. For instance, some cultures may think of well-being as an individual experience, while others may understand well-being as a condition shared by a community and the planet. Some may emphasize the strength of their relationships more than the material aspects of their individual well-being.
Enterprises and investors seek to recognize how their own contexts, beliefs, and values differ from those of people and communities experiencing impacts, and how any differences may influence what data they decide to collect and how they interpret it.
The Impact Management Norms are best thought of as building blocks.
If you are starting from scratch, you may want to build your impact management framework based on them. If you already have an impact management framework, you may want to use them as a checklist to identify any missing elements or areas for improvement.
01
Impacts of enterprises on people and the planet can be understood across five dimensions.
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02
Any enterprise – whether a large multinational, a small business, or a non-profit – can manage its impact. The ABC of Enterprise Impact helps enterprises connect their impact goals to the five dimensions of impact.
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03
For investors, managing the impact of an investment, or a portfolio of investments, means taking into account the positive and negative impacts of the underlying enterprises / assets, as well as the investor’s own contribution. The IMP consensus identified four investor contribution strategies, or actions, by which investors can manage the impacts of their investments.
04
Impact classes bring together the five dimensions of enterprise impact and the four investor contribution strategies. They can be used to define boundaries within which comparisons of impact performance are likely to be possible and sensible.
05
For investors to play a greater role in addressing social and environmental challenges, impact management must leave its silo and integrate with financial management.
