Evaluation and Impact Investing: a Review of Methodologies to Assess Social Impact

This report reviews methodologies used to evaluate social impact within impact investing contexts, highlighting their alignment with investor needs. Through an inductive analysis, the authors identify six essential attributes for evaluation frameworks—comparability, accountability, completeness, simplicity, optimality, and risk-awareness. They apply these criteria to widely used frameworks, finding that none fully address all six. The conclusion calls for either the creation of new models or substantial improvements to existing tools to ensure impact evaluation is robust, investor-relevant, and adaptable to diverse investment strategies