From Intentions to Outcomes: Indicators and Tools for Managing Social Performance

FINCA launched a comprehensive social performance initiative in 2011, coinciding with the entry of new social investors into the organization. These new partners joined to help scale up FINCA's operations and to enable its local subsidiaries to transform into regulated, full-service institutions that could offer savings and other services, in addition to credit. It was expected that these new investors would bring a stronger focus to FINCA’s financial sustainability and growth. At the same time, FINCA wanted to ensure that these investments would produce the social returns as demanded by its mission. FINCA’s board of directors created a social performance audit committee, charging it to develop and monitor a set of indicators corresponding to its social mandate and allowing for strategic decision-making towards desired social outcomes. 

This case study looks at the process of defining and embedding a vision for social performance throughout the organization. The process included the following steps: 

• Define FINCA's social goals based on its mission, re-articulating the mission in measurable terms;
• Select indicators to measure these goals;
• Design survey instruments to gather data;
• Collect data and monitor data quality.