Written in collaboration with Mouvement Impact France, a movement for building an impact economy of socially and environmentally positive businesses.
What is at stake?
Impact represents the positive or negative results attributable to an organization's activities, in social or environmental terms.
According to Mouvement Impact France's definition, impact is characterized by three main pillars:
- Limitation of negative impacts
- Power and value sharing
- Positive impact strategy
Why is it important?
There is a lot of talk about impact-driven organizations whose ecosystem is growing in France (Source).
While not all startups define themselves as "impact-driven" because impact is not integrated into their core activities (meaning they do not have an impact strategy), it is still their responsibility to consider the effects of their activities and to choose methods that "do good" (thus reducing their negative externalities). This logic is reflected in ESG criteria.
To understand the impact of a startup and potentially to improve it, measuring impact is the first step.
➡ Measuring impact helps to prove that the startup is fulfilling its mission, that it is consistent with the values it promotes and with its purpose.
➡ Measuring impact is thus a strategic management tool that shows what works and what doesn’t, allowing a startup to review and adjust its objectives and activities, and to build its legitimacy.
Three actions to take right now
1️⃣ Define the impact to be measured and the tools you will use to do that
- Understand which stakeholders are affected by the startup's mission and activities
- Choose the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be used
- Draw inspiration from B Impact Assessment by B Corp to identify impact areas.
Our products are designed to tackle overdrafts and to provide personalized budget management support. We provide impact indicators to our users, such as the amount of bank fees avoided through Spayr or the number of situations we have detected that might lead to over-indebtedness.
Louis Ajacques, Co-founder of Spayr
2️⃣ Choose appropriate tools to measure impact and collect data
- Collect data using internal tools like Airtable, Notion.
- Choose dedicated external tools like l’Impact Score, Zei, Sami, Goodsteps, etc.
- Seek support from professionals (e.g., Vendredi).
3️⃣ Communicate impact through annual reports shared with stakeholders
📚 For further reading
🛠️ Impact Score (Mouvement Impact France)
📝 B Impact Assessment
📖 Society as A Strategic Stakeholder is the New Corporate Social Responsibility
✍️ Contributors to this document
Mouvement Impact France is a movement of committed leaders dedicated to growing and developing the impact economy.
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