Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS)
Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) are standards for reporting the social and
environmental performance of impact investments.
Why standardize social and environmental performance reporting?
Many mission-driven businesses already use data to communicate their social and environmental impact to company
stakeholders, including impact investors who deliberately invest in organizations that produce social or environmental
good. By standardizing the way these businesses report, IRIS enables fair comparisons and performance benchmarking,
two critical functions that impact investors have identified as necessary for the growth of the impact investing industry.
Why should businesses use IRIS to report their social and environmental performance?
As more investors dedicate a portion of their portfolios to mission-driven for-profit investments, they are
demanding credible data about the social and environmental impact of their investments. IRIS provides a
recognized set of performance measures that have been developed by industry experts, and IRIS is aligned with
established standards where they exist, such as in microfinance. Further, select organizations using IRIS can
anonymously contribute their performance data to the GIIN, which compiles this data to produce benchmarks and
industry-wide analyses.
Who is behind IRIS?
The Rockefeller Foundation, Acumen Fund, and B Lab began developing IRIS in early 2008. In 2009, IRIS became a
program of the Global Impact Investing Network. The specific performance measures and definitions in IRIS are
recommended by working groups of sector experts, and approved by a committee of impact investing leaders.
What does IRIS measure?
IRIS gives businesses a standard framework and vocabulary for reporting information across four main areas:
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Profile information, including the social or environmental goals of the business and the countries where its
goods or services are available.
Financial information, including financial performance metrics that are aligned with International Financial
Reporting Standards (IFRS).
Operational information, including definitions and guidelines for reporting on an organization’s employees,
suppliers, governance policies, and environmental footprint.
Social and environmental impact information, including metrics and definitions for reporting on the scale,
scope, and beneficiaries of the products and services offered.
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How is IRIS used?
Below are a few examples of the value IRIS brings to members of the impact investing community:
The Investor
An investor wants to put five percent of her portfolio into companies developing clean energy products. She finds two
funds reporting similar rates of financial return. Because both funds also report their environmental performance using
IRIS definitions, she can fairly compare the number of households that will gain access to clean energy as a result of her
investment. Though more households are reached through investment in the first fund, the second fund’s portfolio
companies primarily serve rural areas with no prior access to electricity. Because rural access is a priority for this
investor, she moves five percent of her assets into the second fund.
The Fund Manager
A sustainable trade fund manager receives inconsistent performance data from his portfolio companies, which are local
farming cooperatives in developing countries. One cooperative in Argentina reports that his investment of $500,000 has
enabled 115 new jobs. Another cooperative in Ecuador reports that an investment of the same amount has resulted in
80 new jobs. The fund manager knows from prior visits that new jobs in Ecuador are mostly year-round jobs, and that
many of the new jobs in Argentina are seasonal. But, because each cooperative uses its own definition for counting new
jobs created, the fund manager cannot use the reported data to fairly compare the two investments, nor can he
combine data from the two businesses to describe the fund’s overall impact to his investors. By adopting IRIS as the
reporting standard across his portfolio, the fund manager will get comparable data across enterprises, and the ability to
compare them to job creation benchmarks provided by the GIIN. This helps him manage the performance of his
investments, inform investors about his activities, and guide future investments.
The Social Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur in Africa is raising capital to expand a healthcare business providing physical examinations and low-cost
nutritional supplements to rural poor. Prospective investors are asking for information about the expected financial
return and social impact of an investment in the company. The entrepreneur decides to use IRIS definitions to track how
many people met with a doctor or nurse, and how many received the nutritional supplement. This makes investment in
his company more attractive to funders because fund managers are able to easily evaluate the performance of this
investment compared to IRIS benchmarks and other investments they have made in healthcare businesses in the region.
How can I adopt IRIS?
The first version of IRIS is available at iris-standards.org. Fund managers, investors, and mission-based businesses
can adopt IRIS by visiting the website and using the definitions provided to report their social and environmental
performance. The GIIN is working the Aspen Network of Developing Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and the Financial
Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST) to promote adoption of IRIS and to collect data for benchmarking from its
members. The GIIN has also provided IRIS metrics and definitions for a portfolio management tool called Pulse
and can accept data for benchmarking from its users.
Related Projects
Pulse: Developed by the Acumen Fund in collaboration with Google and Salesforce, and now managed by App-X, Pulse is
an application that fund managers and investors can use to track the financial, social, and environmental performance of
their portfolio companies using both IRIS and self-identified metrics.
Global Impact Investing Reporting System (GIIRS): Currently in development by B Lab, GIIRS is a social and
environmental rating system that relies on IRIS definitions to evaluate the social and environmental impact of missiondriven companies and funds. GIIRS is analogous to Morningstar financial investment ratings, but it assesses the nonfinancial aspects of a company’s performance.