The downside of metrics

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Originally uploaded by k masback

The worst news from the Skoll World Forum was from another investor. They were trying to co-invest with a venture philanthropy fund, but found two significant barriers; one that fund does not co-invest, nor release its due diligence reports to even other like-minded institutional funders.

Worse was that this fund had made the social enterprise sign an exclusive deal; they would not take funding from another fund. The reason, it seems, is metrics run amok; they only way to make sure they can measure their impact is to try to restrict other impacts on the enterprises. So less good gets done, less growth of the mission and the company happens in the name of being able to accurately measure and report.

The enterprise, for its part, is looking into going around the restriction by spinning out another entity that investors can take part in. I can’t say how repugnant I find this. Capital needs to learn to flow together, but some seem more intent on creating walled gardens to prove a counter productive point.

World Clock: a dashboard for the Planet

Susan Sanderman of Denver just forwarded this fascinating World Clock that shows the current status of major global health, environmental and social statistics, updated in real time. You can see the rate of population growth, new cases of disease, injury, death, biodiversity loss, marriage and divorce…. It's like a (rather depressing) impact dashboard for the Planet!

This kind of 'impact context' should be a touchstone for any impact analysis– if focused down to the region where a company or organization does its work, it makes a great starting point for what the "addressable market" is in terms of any of these social or environmental issues. Working to prevent biodiversity loss? Malaria? Drowning? Use your impact analysis to say not just, “We're eradicating X instances of the bad thing,” but also, "Here's how much our solution will slow it from the current rate of loss." That makes it MUCH more meaningful.

World Clock's makers compiled it from highly credible sources of statistical datasets, but they have not verified any of it and it may be spotty in parts, so it would be worth verifying if you use it.

China says 35 arrested in Olympics bomb plot

Authorities arrested 35 people in a predominantly Muslim region of China for planning "violent terrorist activities" involving the Summer Olympic Games, the Public Security Ministry said Thursday.

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