Stage 5 · Show impact with evidence · Lesson 1 of 2
SDGs, equality, impact: answering without bluffing
Your dossier asks for your SDGs, the place of women in your management and the jobs you create. This lesson ties each answer to a document you already have, so that it holds up on the day an investor checks it.
Eleven SDGs, two numbers
Ticking every SDG on offer is the most common mistake on this page
In “Complete your dossier”, the field “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) your project contributes to” offers eleven goals. Take a workshop on the east coast that sorts and packs fruit (worked example, made up for the exercise). Twelve full-time staff, seven of them women, and 140 supplier farmers. Zero hunger, yes. Decent work, yes. Equality, probably. Climate, since the generator was replaced. In the end, all eleven are ticked.
A few weeks later, an analyst at an impact fund writes: “For each of these goals, what is the number, and where does it come from?” The workshop can answer for two: jobs, from the payroll, and farmers, from the purchase ledger.
Why you are asked
Your answers travel up to the people who fund your funder
A development institution reports to the governments that own it: how many jobs, how many women, what effect on the climate. An impact fund reports to its investors. A bank lending one of these institutions’ money reports back to it in turn. Your figures pass from hand to hand, and anyone along the way can re-read them.
Worked example, made up for the exercise: 12 full-time jobs, 7 held by women, 2 women out of 4 people in management, 140 farmers.
Development institutions have pooled part of their indicators (the HIPSO set, aligned with the IRIS+ catalogue that many funds use). The same definition of a job, or of women in management, therefore serves several funders. Keep one table with those definitions and you can answer most of them without starting again. The next card shows where each line comes from.
- From claim to proof
- Choosing your SDGs
- The women criterion
- Your people table
- A, B or C
- The question in the meeting
- In your dossier
- What you write
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.
- SDG
- The UN’s 17 big goals (hunger, health, water, jobs…). The number says which one your project helps; it is not a score.
- 2X criteria
- The international standard telling a financier whether a deal counts as gender finance.
- FTE
- One full-time post. Two half-time posts make one FTE.
- Exclusion list
- The activities a financier never funds, whatever your numbers.
- ESG
- What a financier looks at besides your numbers: nature, your staff and neighbours, and how the company is run.
- Category A, B or C
- The environmental and social risk level of your project, as a development institution grades it.
- Investment officer
- The person at the funder who follows your file, studies it and presents it to the committee.
- Security
- What the lender can seize if you do not repay: land, a machine, money your customers owe you.
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.
You never pay to be seen, ranked or introduced.