How can Social Impact Projection help entrepreneurs raise money from investors?

Welcome to this episode of the Speak PR Podcast. Today, I'm really delighted that I've got Catherine Griffin, who's joining us all the way from Philadelphia, and she's a co-founder and CEO of the Impactable X company, which is doing some really exciting things around measuring the economic impact of sustainable activities. Catherine, welcome to the Speak PR Podcast.

Thanks, Jim. It's great to be here.

Can you just give us a bit of history about Impactable X? What are you doing in helping companies to identify the impact that they're making?

I was the managing director at an accelerator for early-stage social entrepreneurs called Good Company Ventures. We worked with the Obama administration's Climate Data Initiative and Bloomberg Philanthropies and Wharton Social Impact Initiative and others all around supporting new innovations to solve really old and challenging social and environmental issues. And over the course of that time, so many of the founders were really grappling with how to verify and validate their aspirations for impact, how to differentiate themselves in front of investors, impact and, you know, traditional venture tech investors. And how to really sort of legitimize what were otherwise anecdotal experiences of impact on final beneficiaries. And so we looked around at some of the other approaches to impact quantification and verification and found that they really applied to later-stage companies, corporations really. And they evaluated, you know, supply chains and operational footprint as opposed to measuring, you know, the products and services of a company. And they were also strictly retrospective. The entrepreneurs we, we work with were really grappling with a way to engage investors around their potential, right? They have new innovations that can solve massive challenges. And they need to engage investors around that possibility. And so we needed an approach to impact quantification that captured that future potential. And so it was really out of this personal experience with entrepreneurs and, you know, seeing their real struggle with this issue for years. you know, among hundreds of entrepreneurs that we developed an approach to quantifying social impact and projecting it over a given term.

Just talk us through what's the real mechanics behind the system.

You know, so many entrepreneurs, I think, struggle with the data piece, especially on the social side, which often is viewed as quite subjective. Or anecdotal, as I mentioned before. And so what we do with our founders is we operate on a unit level. So we take a unit of sale, think of one thing sold or one buyer sold to, and identify the impact on a unit level. And where a company is lacking primary data, which is often the case with startup companies, we are able to draw from comps, from comparables, from other companies that are doing similar things in the— and the efficacy that has been proven there, or through third-party research that says this kind of an innovation can do or generate this kind of impact. But generating that impact on a unit level really makes it much more manageable. Uh, we have a 3-step process. It's very simple. It's very straightforward. First step, we define the metrics. So take, for example, a ton of carbon, uh, as the first impact metric. Then in the second step, we identify the unit-level impact. So for each thing sold, how many tons of carbon are abated? or saved, or in one case from a current client, actually pulled from the atmosphere to generate a new product. So it's— we relate a unit of sale to a unit of impact. And by operating on a sort of individual basis, we then allow entrepreneurs to have a dynamic future-looking projection. Because if we know the impact of one thing sold, Then we know the impact of 50 or 100 or 10,000 things sold over the next 5 or 10 years.

So what would be some of the, the kind of models that you're running for companies? Can you give us a case study? You mentioned one company that's extracting, you know, carbon from the atmosphere. Can you talk us through a case study?

Absolutely. So, we had a company that participated in a project with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the City of Philadelphia and Wharton Social Impact Initiative. And it was addressing recidivism. And the company has now gone on to do incredible things. But when he worked with us, he was still just very new. And— The idea was that by selling certain types of tablet technologies into prisons with educational content built in, they could reduce the likelihood of recidivism, of an inmate returning to prison within a certain period of release. And when we worked with him, it was sort of this theory. And so step 1, we identify his core metrics. For him, it was reduced 3-year reincarceration rate and sustained employment 1 year post-release. Then in the second step, we talk about that unit-level impact. So here we're talking about a prison. So we looked at how many prisons he expects to sell to over the next 5 years. how many prisoners on average are in each prison, how many active users then per prison will use his product, and then of those, how many will be released over a given period and won't return to prison based off of what the research says. And sure enough, You know, the RAND Corporation had recently published a report that said that this type of educational content can reduce the likelihood of returning to prison by quite a substantial percent. And we typically like to discount that percentage just to really engage stakeholders and operate as conservatively as possible. And so now we have a rough number of prisoners who, based off of the research, won't return to prison, to that one prison, over a given term. And so we can then apply that across all of the prisons that he expects to sell to over the next 5 years. And we get a total number of prisoners who, based off of the research, won't return to prison within a given— within the next 5 years. So that's an impact output or KPI. Then in the third step, we look at economic valuation of impact, which is something you and I have talked at length about.

Right.

And this is where we look at new value created and costs avoided As a function of the impact. And so here we looked at what it costs a state every time an inmate is released and returns to prison within a period of time. It's expensive. I mean, the costs to the state are astronomical. And so, again, we, we often even discount it and look at averages over the over the entire country. But we're able to multiply then this economic value of one prisoner returning to prison within 3 years of release by the number of prisoners that the research says will be impacted by this technology over the same period of time. And we get a social impact projection for that one metric. which represents the total impact value that this company can generate over a given period of time pursuant to their sales and revenue projections.

Oh, how interesting. So also what's coming out there as well, though, Catherine, is that it's not just a sort of an environmental index in terms of like carbon or water, right? It's lots of different metrics that you're making impact. So that UN Sustainability Goals that cover so many different aspects you're really talking to a large number of them, right?

That's right. That's right. So this gets into a little bit of the theory behind our approach, which is social entrepreneurs are solving massive problems. And by solving massive problems, they create massive value. But they can only monetize a portion of that value that they create. And so if you just look at a company's revenue model, you're missing all of that additional value that they're creating. And so our approach really tries to capture all of that external value, whether that value is experienced by the buyer or whether it's experienced by the commons. We try to capture that value. And so that can be social or that can be environmental. And so that's why really getting clear on what the metrics are in that first step, and yes, aligning with global standards like the Impact Management Project, IRIS+, and notably the Sustainable Development Goals, their indicators and targets as well, is so important because it's not standardized and the kinds of impact that different innovations in business models and technologies can have should really be acknowledged, I think, on a case-by-case basis, even though they can roll up into more sort of general categories or impact verticals.

If there's a business owner out there, what are they getting? Do they come and engage Impactable X and get a software in a box? Do they get consultancy?

Absolutely, yeah. So when we work with a founder, We start by having that conversation about their company's impact metrics, and we understand their business model. And then they get access to software that walks them through the data collection process. So all of the different inputs that they need in order to generate these analytics. So they get access to the, to the methodology and they get guidance through it. customized for their specific innovation and business model. And once we have all of the sort of baseline data collected, then we generate the following deliverables for them. First, they get a company report which shows all of the high-level data points that we uncover. So their impact metrics, their impact outputs, impact valuations, and impact multiples. We didn't talk about this earlier, but we generate revenue to impact multiples and capital to impact multiples, which I think is particularly fascinating and interesting for investors. So we generate a company report that has all of that clearly laid out. That's also Supported by a data validation page, which essentially shows all of our work, our assumptions, if we make any calculations, citations, et cetera. Then we generate a certification mark. So a founder can say on their website or pitch deck or marketing materials that this data has been verified, it's third-party certified. And they get a core logic model, which is essentially a stable formula with variable inputs. So they can play around with their revenue and sales projections, or they can play around with their impact percentages or capital requirements or the various sort of data points that feed into their analytics within a stable formula. So that allows them to be, you know, startup founders, to play around with their assumptions and expectations of how their business will grow over time. And then from there, we check in with founders every 3 months just to make sure that their data is tight. If they've pivoted, we update their analytics. We support them with office hours with investors and with marketing advisors and experts who can help them integrate some of these data points into their marketing and branding. Our mission is really to help founders deliver their impact at scale. We want to see social impact scaled far and wide. And so we really want to provide all of the value, practical and theoretical, that can help them do that. We think that impact data is the right place to start.

What has been the response from the VC or the finance community to the Impactable X offering and formula?

So, uh, increasingly impact investors are beginning to really require impact data. I think investors for quite some time have been trying to figure out what kinds of impact reporting to expect from the founders they invest in, and they're very wary about placing undue burden, etc. And so they love that this is so streamlined. This is intended to take a couple of weeks to a month, right? This is not intended to be a lifecycle assessment. You know, it's not intended to take years and require piles of primary data. So they absolutely love that. It also streamlines ongoing impact reporting. So once we certify the relationship between revenue and impact, then impact reporting becomes a function of financial reporting, which they're doing already. And so it really streamlines the whole process. And they love that there's third-party validation as well. It adds a degree of credibility and legitimacy. to the impact claims of entrepreneurs. So the other piece here is that by converting it into a dollar value, it allows impact to integrate into traditional fund management practices. So investors can actually understand impact performance against financial performance, and they can see what kind of stake, what kind of ownership stake they and their LPs have in the impact generation of their portfolio. companies. So it just generates tremendous new insights for investors while also offering a really user-friendly, you know, approach. So it's been resounding, the reception.

Wonderful. I can understand why as well, having done IR work for clients and a listing before. Can you tell us a little bit about who can afford this? What does it cost to ring Catherine? And have you help figure out their impact?

You know, we don't want the cost to be a barrier to entry for founders to build social impact projections. And so we've priced base certification at $995 US. Oh, wow, okay. And that provides access to the methodology, guidance through it, and the deliverables that I mentioned earlier. There's additional services that we can offer to support founders with research, with data collection, et cetera. But that base certification is really priced accessibly for founders.

Katherine, sounds amazing. Impactable X, where can people find out more about you?

Sure. So you can find me on LinkedIn or visit us online at www.socialimpactprojection.org.

Wonderful. That's quite a mouthful, that URL, so I'll put that in the show notes. So thank you, Katherine, so much for joining me. I know that you're a very busy lady, so thanks for making time to share what you do with Impactful X.

It's been a real pleasure, Jim. Thank you so much.

Great. Well, you've been listening to the Speak PR Podcast, which is a show for entrepreneurs and business owners who want to unlock the value in their businesses through better communication. And it sounds as though measuring your social economic impact is really one of the best ways to do that. So, and so with that, I'd like to just thank Catherine Griffin again. That's socialimpactprojection.org. And in the meantime, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that you keep on communicating and measuring your impact on your world.