I’ve nursed this question for a while.
It is validating to read a confirmation: the most recent paper by Long-term Impact Association shows that while non-profit organizers measure #impact for accountability to both funders and beneficiaries, non-NGO #investors measure impact to communicate performance to investors.
It's a world of difference.
By prioritizing accountability, NGOs (particularly high-impact NGOs) tend to reiterate their ToCs through adaptive feedback from beneficiaries.
By prioritizing communication, non-NGO investors lean towards reportage that is standardized, scalable, and easy to benchmark. While this has the advantage of increasing the frequency of reports, the downside is a tendency to report for report's sake, i.e., non-NGO investors are less likely to use data to inform management decisions.
I'd like to learn more from evaluators in the impact investment space. The link to the report is in the comments.
