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Chicago, IL, May 24, 2023 – The Impact Genome Registry (IGR), a leader in social impact verification, announced a new collaboration with Deloitte* to help strengthen its existing verification process. Deloitte’s investment in IGR will support the establishment of a best-in-class method for verifying social impacts and progress on UN sustainable development goals.  

This collaboration represents the shared desire of IGR and Deloitte to enhance market confidence in social sector measurement, at a time when reinforcing the credibility of environmental, social and governance (ESG) related metrics is especially critical.  

"As investors and governments alike call for greater visibility into public- and private-sector social investments, a lack of centralized standards has led to challenges in verifying progress across organizations, industries, and geographies,” said John Mennel, sustainability strategy leader and managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “The Impact Genome Registry enables organizations, regardless of sector, to have confidence that they are making progress on their social priorities and that they meaningfully contribute to overall ESG strategies. Deloitte is proud to work closely with IGR to bolster the ability to have an effective social impact registry.”

“The message from stakeholders is loud and clear: prioritizing, measuring, and reporting on impact for social issues matters, and organizations who do so will be recognized and rewarded in the market,” said John Peto, principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP and US sustainability consulting lead. “As the Impact Genome Registry bolsters trust in this ecosystem through more verifiable data, we will see social investments grow and, ultimately, progress made in solving society’s most intractable problems.”

A $70 trillion market

Social spending is the world’s largest financial market. In fact, spending across the social impact sector – including government, global and domestic philanthropy, and S-themed ESG assets under management – equals roughly $72 trillion annually. And yet, according to the UN, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains “in grave danger.”

This gap highlights a growing need for independent verification and assurance infrastructure for social impact, especially as emerging global regulations, such as the European Union’s impending Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), is putting pressure on corporations to independently verify and assure their claims related to workforce, customers, and communities.

As the world’s first registry that allows organizations to self-report claims of social impacts, IGR also validates and verifies claims against peer-reviewed standards. Drawing from industry best practices and verification methodologies, IGR’s improved verification process will establish the high-water mark for measuring social impact outcomes and chart a path for addressing future regulatory requirements for the emerging and critical “S” of ESG.

IGR’s robust impact verification process would allow:

  • The public and social sector to have a common definition for what it means to achieve success for a given outcome  
  • Capital markets to have confidence to invest and trade social outcomes as a standalone asset based on credible underlying evidence
  • Corporations and governments to make public statements about their social and community impacts while adhering to growing regulatory and reporting expectations  
  • Nonprofits and NGOs of all sizes to turn their outcomes into investable assets and develop a new mechanism for sustainable financing  

In an environment where multi-million-dollar organizations claim a huge portion of limited philanthropy dollars, IGR is committed to creating equity in the sector by enabling nonprofits of all sizes to demonstrate their impact. To date, over 70% of programs vetted by IGR and shared on its public registry have operating budgets under $1 million and nearly 800 of these programs have an operating budget of less than $100,000.

“At the end of the day, independent verification will give the markets confidence to create a new asset class called ‘social impact,’” said Jason Saul, CEO, Impact Genome. “This will level the playing field, giving all nonprofits equitable access to capital, and will tap market forces to solve social problems more efficiently.”

About The Impact Genome Project®

The Impact Genome Registry ® (IGR) is the world’s leading registry for standardizing and verifying the social impact of NGOs, corporations and governments.  

*Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of their legal structure.