I tried to make a joke about measuring, but it was too short
Active Impact entered the market at a time when there was a huge gap at the seed stage in climate funding, where we felt our skills were particularly well suited to help. Since the beginning, we have been searching for solutions that will create the most positive impact moving forward. Our mission is to “provide funding and talent to accelerate the growth of early-stage companies to achieve venture scale profit, while solving the most urgent environmental issues.” To evaluate our success, we measure our progress on impact in addition to financial metrics. Earlier this year, we proudly celebrated 1M tonnes of GHG emissions averted via our portfolio companies.
But after we spoke to much larger funding entities, we began to rethink how we represent our impact and decided to update our ‘Theory of Change’. We now also measure progress using a metric of emissions reductions per dollar of revenue. We realized that if you simply look for the highest GHG emissions reductions realized during the investment period, then you could invest in a single late stage company and immediately claim 1M tonnes of emissions averted. However, our assertion is that this pales in comparison to the potential within the 37 investments we have made so far. We believe the compounding effect of the growth of our portfolio companies will lead to cumulative GHG reductions far beyond 1M tonnes. We challenge others looking to maximize impact to consider a similar approach, and get comfortable with the fact that the highest total volume of emissions reductions may happen after your investment period.
