Stage 5 · Show impact with evidence · Lesson 2 of 2
Measuring without exhausting yourself: five numbers, five sources
Once you are funded, you will send your funders an impact report every year. For a fifteen-person company it comes down to five numbers taken from documents you already have, and one day of work spread across the year.
The line in the letter
“Annual impact report, to be sent within four months of the financial year end”
A lychee processing workshop in Toamasina: fifteen employees, one hundred and forty producers under contract. The impact fund looking at its file has just sent a letter of intent. Lova, who runs the workshop, finds this line on page 2, with a twenty-two-page report template attached.
Open each line.
The Beneficiary shall send an annual impact report within four months of the end of its financial year.Clause 6, information
Once a year. With a 31 December year end, before the end of April. This line will then move into the investment agreement, next to sending the accounts.
A late report does not cancel the investment, but it is noted at monitoring. What follows depends on the agreement: usually a reminder, then a breach of the information undertaking.
Indicators: as per the attached template.Annex 3 · 22 pages
The template covers every sector in the fund’s portfolio. Much of it does not apply to a fifteen-person workshop.
Ask in writing, before you sign, which indicators are mandatory for you. What binds you is the list annexed to the signed agreement.
Tonnes of CO2 avoidedAnnex 3, climate section
This calculation needs an emission factor and a baseline, meaning what would have happened without you. It is always open to argument.
Give your kWh and litres of diesel instead, with the invoices. The fund converts them with its own factors.
Indirect beneficiariesAnnex 3, social section
The producers’ families, your customers’ customers. You get the figure by multiplying a counted number by an assumption.
If you fill it in, write the assumption and its source next to it, and keep it apart from the numbers you actually counted.
Composite case built from several files; letter shortened and rewritten, figures rounded.
The first instinct is to think of software, a consultant and two weeks of work. For a business this size, reporting to funders comes down to five numbers and one day a year. The rest of the lesson shows which numbers, where they come from, and how to keep the routine going without wearing out the team.
Five numbers, five documents
Five numbers, each taken from a document you already produce
None of them needs a survey or software. The workshop’s figures at 31 December 2026:
Same case, rounded figures. The first three lines and energy follow the Joint Impact Indicators (HIPSO and IRIS+, 2021), which cover jobs, gender and climate. The business metric depends on what you do: customers, students, patients, households connected.
Next to each number, write down three things. The exact document: “December 2026 payroll journal”, not “the accounts”. The person who answers for it, by name. The cut-off date, which then stays fixed: headcount “averaged over the year” and headcount “at 31 December” are two different numbers.
A due diligence team calls this five-line, three-column table a measurement system. They want to trace each number back to a document without needing you. Put the five documents in an “Impact 2026” folder on the day you fill in the table.
- One day a year
- One more number in July
- Outputs and outcomes
- The theory of change
- Their definitions, once
- When a number falls
- In your file
- One page, once a year
The rest of the lesson
Keep reading with your free account
8 more parts, with the calculations on your own numbers and what to write in your file. The account is free, no commitment.
The words of this lesson
Each word links to its full definition in the glossary.
- Reporting
- The regular reports (figures, activity, results) you must send to whoever finances you.
- Theory of change
- One page saying how what you do produces what you claim, with the assumption written under each arrow.
- FTE
- One full-time post. Two half-time posts make one FTE.
- IRIS+ and HIPSO
- The two impact indicator catalogues financiers share, so that you count once.
- Output and outcome
- An output is what you produced. An outcome is what changed in people's lives.
- Term sheet
- A short letter, before the contract, summarising the investor’s offer: amount, share, conditions.
- Due diligence
- The investigation the investor runs on you before signing.
- Bank margin
- What the bank adds to its base rate according to the risk of your file; it is the part you can negotiate.
- Accountant
- The professional who keeps or prepares your accounts. They do not certify them.
- Assumptions sheet
- The page where you write down your plan’s assumptions (prices, volumes, timing) and where each one comes from.
From the lesson to your file
Check in two minutes whether your project fits the funders of the region, then create your account to follow the lessons with your own numbers. Free, no commitment.
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