GSG Impact launches “Secondary Mobilisation” report on SME Finance at Financing for Development
1 July, 2025
NEW YORK, 26TH SEPTEMBER 2018
A group of leading global organisations has created a network called the Impact Management Project (“IMP”): an ambitious initiative to provide coherent and end-to-end ‘rules of the road’ for impact management. In an increasingly fragmented landscape of initiatives, this network offers a unique shot at agreeing on standards of practice that might ultimately become generally accepted globally.
The IMP network, which launches during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, is an unprecedented collaboration between nine global organisations with complementary areas of expertise:
The IMP network is a response to the growing demand for greater consensus on what constitutes good impact management practice. If stakeholders across the value chain can understand and report on their performance using a ‘generally accepted’ approach, it will be easier to work together to achieve common goals like the SDGs, facilitate the flow of more capital into the space, and prevent any attempts at ‘impact-washing’.
Clara Barby, who is facilitating the Impact Management Project, said:
“In financial management, ‘general acceptance’ of norms for how we talk about, measure and manage financial performance enables capital to flow efficiently across value chains and across borders. If we want impact management to become the norm for every enterprise and investor, as the UN Sustainable Development Goals demand, we need shared principles, reporting standards and benchmarking methods for impact. The IMP network is the first time that such a diverse group of organisations, from across the entire value chain, have chosen to work on content in a deliberately coordinated fashion. This is our best shot at creating an impact management approach that can ultimately become ‘generally accepted’ globally.”
The IMP network builds on the previous phases of the Impact Management Project, a global effort to establish impact management norms involving more than 2,000 practitioners across different disciplines and geographies. The widespread consensus achieved under the IMP is that, since all businesses and investments have effects on people and the planet, managing impact is the process of figuring out which effects matter and then trying to prevent the negative and increase the positive. Impact management norms agreed through the project include a shared definition of impact and the type of information that one would therefore expect to find in any good impact framework and impact report. The project also provides a logic for sharing information about impact across increasingly complex value chains – from people and planet experiencing impact, to enterprises, to investment intermediaries and advisors, to asset owners.
The IMP network will be coordinated by the market-building arm of Bridges Fund Management, which launched and facilitated the earlier phases of the Impact Management Project.
The work of the IMP has been supported by a diverse consortium of funders, ranging from some of the world’s largest investors and philanthropists, to government bodies, to multinational corporations. They include: Omidyar Network, Ford Foundation, DFID Impact Programme, MacArthur Foundation, Anthos, AXA, Barclays, Big Society Capital, BlackRock, the Case Foundation, Generation Foundation, Hermes, Heron Foundation, Leapfrog Investments, Mars, Inc, Neuberger Berman, PGGM, PIMCO, UBS and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Media Enquiries
Please contact media@gsgii.org for all media enquiries related to this article.
1 July, 2025
26 June, 2025
21 May, 2025
22 April, 2025
No Content Set
Exception:
Website.Models.ViewModels.Blocks.SiteBlocks.CookiePolicySiteBlockVm