A group of over 170 microfinance practitioners, donors, raters, investors endorse a common statement of principles in support of social performance. Read the statement and sign on to the initiative.
Promoting Social Performance in Microfinance
“Microfinance works best when it measures – and discloses – its performance; accurate, standardized performance information is imperative, both financial information and social information.” (from the G8-endorsed CGAP “Key Principles of Microfinance”)
As organizations involved in the field of microfinance, we the undersigned:
Define social performance as the effective translation of an institution’s social goals into practice in line with accepted social values that relate to:
Serving increasing numbers of poor and excluded people sustainably (i.e.expanding and deepening outreach to poorer people)
Improving the quality and appropriateness of financial services available to target clients through systematic assessment of their specific needs
Creating benefits for clients of microfinance, their families, and communities relating to social capital and social links, assets, reduction in vulnerability, income, access to services, and fulfillment of basic needs
Improving the social responsibility of the MFI towards it employees, its clients and the community it serves.
Recognize that financial performance alone is insufficient to achieve our goal of serving increasing numbers of poor and excluded people sustainably. Success in microfinance is driven by a double-bottom line: strong financial and social performance, and that these twin measures are mutually reinforcing in the long run.
Further recognize a growing interest from donors, networks, practitioners, rating agencies, funders, and other stakeholders in testing, applying, and improving new tools for social performance management, assessment, monitoring, and reporting.
Support recent developments in the field of monitoring social performance. Many actors developed new tools, all of which have the same objective of promoting social performance, but which offer different approaches.
Commit to improving the social impact of microfinance by:
Becoming pioneers in the practice of regularly assessing, reporting on, and managing by the social performance of our organizations and the organizations we support
Setting clearly specified social objectives for our own organizations and criteria for the organizations we support
Designing, introducing and using systems to manage, assess, monitor, and report inside and outside our organization on social performance
Using information on social performance to improve our operations
Remaining open to external auditing of our social results
Promoting and exchanging ideas and information on social performance.
