This project seeks to compare IRIS and UN SDG metric frameworks to develop a more approachable, universal benchmark. To create a platform that addressed the challenges of measuring impact and how to clearly define metrics despite outlying factors like geography, demographics, and enterprise size. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is a benchmark created with the primary goal of achieving a more sustainable future for our world. These goals are set up in an easy-to-maneuver manner on their website, describing the targets and indicators that correlate to each of the 17 goals established. The layout of the UN website is admirable, it incorporates publications and events beneath the correlating SDGs; however, the metric system itself is too general and broad to be adaptable for all ventures and organizations. 

With general metrics, the UN SDG benchmark has left gaps in measuring impact, leading to inequality. One major gap is the balance of metrics. UN SDG primary metrics incorporate a mix of social, ecological, and infrastructure within their targets and indicators. With some targets incorporating more social or infrastructure categories comparable to 5 broad ecological, businesses can look “sustainable” by their score, when they actually may not be. Following this gap, UN SDG lacks territorial metrics within its framework. Without territorial metrics measuring the impact a business has ecologically or socially in another part of the world, impact scores can be misconceived.

IRIS’ website and framework are incredibly overwhelming. With a library of over 600 metrics, a major burden is placed upon impact investors to have to figure out an efficient way of navigating through the platform. On the other hand, UN SDG’s platform is easy to comprehend. IRIS’ platform has a handful of key concepts woven throughout IRIS metrics: analyzing who the stakeholders are, how minority groups (women, people with disabilities, refugees, etc.) interact with the enterprise, whether these minorities are part of the stakeholders, part of the supply chain, or even being displaced, geography, how big the enterprise is, affordability and accessibility of resources. Unlike UN SDG, IRIS metrics are incredibly specific, allowing for a detailed benchmark to measure impact.

UN SDG framework consists of unbalanced metrics, allowing for too many development indicators to disproportionate impact scores. Development indicators cannot be substituted for the destructive levels of ecological impacts. If there is a  proposed framework, it would have to be able to align with the IRIS framework but less detailed and less complicated. This comparative analysis shows how the IRIS framework can be best implemented into the ImpactX platform. The best platform should be able to connect investors to organizations and help drive the industry of impact investing.