Do you provide impact capital or drive impact projects for a variety of organizations? Do you
agree that we need to sustain the dignity peace and prosperity of people and the
planet? Hi everyone, my name is Chris Gaines, lead trainer at SoPact and today we'll discuss
how we can all work together to drive real impact through sustainable development goals. In 2015
more than 190 world leaders committed to the 17 sustainable development goals or SDGs with
the purpose of eradicating extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and fix climate change.
We all have a role to play if we're going to achieve those goals of a more prosperous equitable
and sustainable world. Ever since the sustainable development goals were launched the challenge for
organizations and impact practitioners has been to translate those global goals into something
applicable and attainable at the local level. In our last two videos, we talked about creating
or impact strategy using the theory of change framework and the five dimensions of impacts by
impact management project. If you haven't checked them out you'll find links in the description
below. But the hardest part of defining a strategy is deciding what to measure and how to measure
and this is where the alignment to sustainable development goals comes into the picture. In this
video we'll review four actionable tips to select the right outcomes, metrics and align them to SDG.
In future videos we'll have more tips on selecting the right metrics and survey questions, so don't
forget to smash that like button, subscribe and click the notification bell so you don't miss any
of the upcoming content that we have planned for you. Without further ado, let's jump into today's
topic and let's start by asking ourselves why should I even aligned with SDG? Businesses cannot
thrive in a world of poverty and equality, unrest and environmental stress. The SDGs are anticipated
to generate at least 12 trillion dollars worth of market opportunities by 2030, which
makes a strong business case for investing in opportunities aligned with the SDGs for investors
and businesses. So if you're a fund manager you might want to focus on the SDG align companies
and if you're a social enterprise or nonprofit, it's in your best interest to demonstrate your as
part of the efforts to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. To help you achieve those goals
here are the four actionable tips to select the right outcomes metrics and align them to SDG.
Social value international in short referred to as SVI is changing the way society accounts for
value through principles, practice, people and power. There are seven principles guide visitors,
investors and accelerators on how to align social value and decision making. According
to the SVI's principles involved stakeholders and understand what changes you should talk
to your beneficiaries and identify what they consider as material outcomes then explore how
the outcomes are linked to each other and develop indicators to measure if the outcome has occurred
and how much of that outcome has occurred. When it comes to developing your indicators before
creating any bespoke metrics take a look at the IRIS plus standard developed by the global impact
investing network. IRIS plus has a catalogue with generally accepted output and outcome metrics
that are already aligned to SDG and categorized by impact areas such as agriculture, climate,
education and many more. Chances are 40 to 50 percent of your metric needs will be covered by
iris plus and even if you have to create the rest of metrics on your own you will have a better idea
on how to define them. If you're still not clear on where your impact fits in with the 17 SDGs,
don't take a guess. Review all the SDG targets in detail. For example, if your organization
is providing free breakfast to students in rural schools, you might think that you would fit in SDG
4, quality education but in reality this SDG is only focused on equal access to quality education
for people to acquire relevant skills. However if you look at SDG 2, zero hunger, you might find
alignment with the target 2.2 related to ending malnutrition in children. On the other hand you
could be aligning to more than one SDG at once. For example, if you run a program to help small
holder women farmers in a developing country, you might be hitting the goals no poverty,
zero hunger, gender equality and decent work and economic growth. Finally if you're in the
private sector, you might want to keep an eye on the SDG impact. This initiative is focusing on
generating and leveraging private sector capital and delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.
SDG impact is in the process of refining the SDG impact practices assurance standards for private
equity funds which include the practices asurance standard for private equity, the certification
framework and the mapping principles. Although these standards are still in pilot phase,
you can already see that they are pretty much aligning to other frameworks and principles
that we have been reviewing in this channel, so that gives you a good idea of where the market
is going. So to recap, any organisation working to benefit the society or the planet can measure
impact in alignment to sustainable development goals. A big amount of capital is moving towards
organizations and initiatives supporting the achievement of the SDG. To make the SDG alignment
process smoother for your organization, start with the standards guidelines and frameworks
that are already available. Here at SoPact, we understand the importance of aligning all
of these frameworks and presenting them in a way that is easy to understand and actionable for many
organizations. That's why our platform Impact Cloud has a repository with the main standard
catalogs like IRIS plus, GRI, STG indicators and many more including their respective alignment to
sustainable development goals. Well, thanks for watching everyone. I hope you learned something
new and I'm curious to hear what challenges you and your organisation are currently facing when
it comes to defining what to measure and aligning your metrics to frameworks like IRIS plus,
the impact management project and SDGs. Drop a comment down below and let's get the discussion
started and if you found this information helpful don't forget to Like and subscribe to our channel
so you never miss an upload and until then this has been Chris Gaines. I'll see in the next one.