The Universal Standards for Social Performance Management: Implementation Guide

This toolkit seeks to assist financial service providers in finding indicators and benchmarks to assess their social performance. Providers that can benefit from the guide include non-government organizations, cooperatives, non-bank financial institutions, microfinance banks, and even commercial banks that target low income and underserved clients. Moreover, the guide can also be used by other stakeholders who need to understand social performance management (SPM) and how to evaluate it including funders, auditors, raters, and technical assistance providers. It is also beneficial for financial institutions that do not have social goals but are striving to achieve more responsible practices. The toolkit covers the following sections in detail:

• Five steps for creating an SPM action plan with a focus on introducing the universal standards to an institution and evaluating and improving practices;
• Operationalizing the social performance action plan and identifying the specific social performance data and management positions involved in making important operational and strategic decisions;
• Guidance for each of the 19 individual standards found in the Universal Standards for SPM and examples of how institutions are implementing them in practice;
• Existing industry resources that correspond with each of the standards.