Social Impact Claims Code

If you say you’re making a difference, people should be able to trust what you say.

The Social Impact Claims Code is a practical, principle-based framework for measuring, interpreting and communicating social and environmental impact responsibly.

It is for charities, businesses, social enterprises, funders, advisers and anyone making claims about the difference they create.

The central principleMake the strongest claim the evidence allows.
No stronger.
Explore the Code ↓Help shape the Code ↓

The Code is being developed openly by My Social Impact. We welcome challenge, scrutiny and contributions from people working across social impact and beyond.

Enduring foundations

Some things should not move.

Methods change. Technology changes. Reporting standards change. Evidence improves.

AI will transform how information is collected, analysed and communicated.

But the foundations of trustworthy claims are more fundamental.

01

Truth

Say what the evidence genuinely supports.

02

Integrity

Apply the same standards when the evidence is inconvenient.

03

Honesty

Be clear about uncertainty, failure and what you do not know.

04

Fairness

Represent different experiences and credible interpretations properly.

05

Accountability

Be willing to explain and stand behind the claims you make.

Truth does not become outdated because AI gets better.

Integrity does not become optional because a reporting standard changes.

Honesty about uncertainty should still matter in 20 years.

Enduring principles.
Evolving practice.

How AI is used will change. How verification works will change. New methodologies will emerge. Expectations around data sharing and disclosure will develop.

The foundations should endure. Their application should improve as we learn.

The claim problem

Anyone can make an impact claim. Why should anyone believe it?

Activity / output

“We worked with 5,000 people.”

Outcome

“People’s lives improved.”

Causal impact claim

“Our programme caused that improvement.”

The stronger the claim, the stronger the evidence should be.

Trust

Impact reporting is ultimately about trust.

01

Donors

Did my money actually make a difference?

02

Customers

Is this organisation’s impact claim real?

03

Funders & investors

What difference did our funding help create?

04

Trustees & boards

Are we achieving our purpose?

05

Employees

Does this organisation live up to what it says?

06

Communities & beneficiaries

Is our experience being represented fairly?

Trust is not created by making a claim sound more convincing.
It is earned by showing why the claim deserves to be believed.

What is social impact?

What do we mean by social impact?

We define social impact as a meaningful change in people’s lives, communities or society that results, at least in part, from an organisation’s actions.

For organisations seeking positive impact, the aim is not simply to create activity. It is to create meaningful positive change that lasts and can itself be sustained.

The same underlying principles can be applied to environmental impact.

Proportionality

Rigorous does not have to mean complicated.

A small community organisation should not need a university research department before it can talk honestly about its impact.

The appropriate level of evidence depends on the organisation, its resources, the importance of the claim and how strong that claim is.

01 · Small organisation

A few pages may be enough.

  • Clear evidence.
  • Modest claims.
  • Honest limitations.
02 · Growing organisation

More evidence may be appropriate.

  • Outcome measurement.
  • Stakeholder feedback.
  • Better comparison.
03 · Major claim

Strong claims need stronger evidence.

  • More robust evaluation.
  • Counterfactual thinking.
  • Potential independent verification.
Proportionality means doing enough to justify the claim, not creating bureaucracy for its own sake.

My Social Impact works with smaller organisations at affordable and proportionate levels too.

Sometimes a clear three or four-page Impact Report is entirely appropriate. Our job is to understand what evidence exists, apply professional judgement and help an organisation communicate what it can reasonably say.

Talk to us about your impactmarcus@mysocialimpact.org

The Code

Five principles for trustworthy impact claims.

Evidence is the beginning. Proportion, transparency, balance and learning turn it into a claim that deserves trust.

01

Evidence

Know what supports the claim.

  • What happened?
  • What changed?
  • How do we know?

Distinguish clearly between activity, output, outcome and impact. Consider what might have happened anyway. Use evidence appropriate to the significance and strength of the claim.

Stronger claims require stronger evidence.
02

Proportion

Make the strongest claim the evidence allows. No stronger.

  • Do not turn activity into impact.
  • Do not turn output into outcome.
  • Do not turn contribution into causation.
  • Do not turn uncertainty into certainty.

And do not demand academic-level evaluation where it isn’t necessary.

The evidence and the claim should match.
03

Transparency

Show your workings.

A reader should be able to understand where an important claim came from and why the organisation believes it is reasonable.

Trust grows when claims can be scrutinised.
04

Balance

Tell the whole story, not just the best story.

  • What worked?
  • What didn’t?
  • Who benefited?
  • Who didn’t?
  • Were there unintended consequences?
  • Could the evidence be interpreted differently?

Represent credible differences in experience and interpretation, including evidence that points in another direction.

Evidence does not become less important when it is inconvenient.
05

Learning

Impact evidence should change what you do.

The purpose of measuring impact is not simply to prove that an organisation succeeded. It is to become better at creating change. Something that did not work is not necessarily a failure of impact practice.

Refusing to learn from it might be.

The claim check

Before publishing an impact claim, ask:

  1. 01What exactly are we claiming?
  2. 02Is this an activity, output, outcome or impact?
  3. 03What evidence supports it?
  4. 04How strong is that evidence?
  5. 05Are we claiming contribution or causation?
  6. 06What might have happened anyway?
  7. 07What evidence points the other way?
  8. 08Did different groups experience different outcomes?
  9. 09Were there unintended positive or negative consequences?
  10. 10What don’t we know?

If somebody challenged this claim, could we show them why it is reasonable?

Principles vs rules

Principles, not 300 pages of rules.

There are already many reporting standards, regulations and methodologies. The Code does not try to replace them. It sits underneath them.

Reporting & regulation

Charities SORP

CSRD / ESRS

UK climate and sustainability requirements

SECR

Modern Slavery reporting

Gender Pay Gap reporting

Other statutory requirements

Standards, frameworks & voluntary approaches

GRI

ISSB / IFRS S1 & S2

TNFD

GHG Protocol

SBTi

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Social Value / SROI

B Corp

The Social Impact Claims Code does not try to replace them.

It sits underneath them.
Standards and regulations may ask

What do we need to report?

versus
The Social Impact Claims Code asks

What can we responsibly say?

Standards tell you what to report.
Principles help you decide what you can responsibly say.

Some things you have to do. Others you choose to do.

Requirements depend on organisation, sector, size and jurisdiction.

You may have to do

Financial reporting

Charity reporting

Carbon and energy reporting

Statutory sustainability disclosures

Modern Slavery reporting

Gender Pay Gap reporting

Other regulatory disclosures

You may choose to do

B Corp

Voluntary Impact Reports

Social Value / SROI

GRI

Science-based targets

Independent impact evaluation

Impact verification

Social Impact Claims Code

Compliance asksWhat are we required to report?

Purpose asksWhat do we want people to be able to trust us to say?

How we use the Code

If we put our name to an impact claim, these are the principles we expect ourselves to follow.

The Code is not simply something we think other organisations should follow. We are already applying it to our own work.

01

We don’t invent impact

We work from the evidence available.

02

We don’t overclaim

We distinguish between what is known, what can reasonably be inferred and what remains uncertain.

03

We don’t hide important limitations

Credibility matters more than making every result appear positive.

04

We use professional judgement

No methodology can eliminate judgement entirely. The important thing is that judgement is exercised responsibly and transparently.

My Social Impact works with organisations that want to make a positive change.

We help them understand that change, strengthen the evidence behind it and communicate it responsibly.

Talk to us about your impactmarcus@mysocialimpact.org

Social Impact Accounting

Impact deserves professional judgement too.

Financial accounting developed disciplines for recording, interpreting and communicating financial performance.

We believe some of that thinking can strengthen how organisations understand social and environmental performance too. Not because every human outcome should be converted into money.

But because important claims deserve:

EvidenceConsistencyJudgementTransparencyAccountabilityTrust

Marcus Warry, co-founder of My Social Impact, is a Chartered Accountant. We are working with other accountants, impact practitioners and organisations to explore what a stronger discipline of Social Impact Accounting could look like.

If financial claims require discipline, why shouldn’t important impact claims?

Social Impact Marketing

Communicate the impact. Don’t inflate it.

Evidence needs to be understood. Stories matter. Communication matters. Emotion matters. Behavioural change matters.

But powerful communication should not require exaggerated claims.

Dr Chris Arnold, co-founder of My Social Impact and a former board director at Saatchi & Saatchi, has extensive experience in ethical marketing, social impact marketing, communications and behavioural change.

This brings another discipline to the Code: how to communicate evidence in ways that are engaging and effective without making the claim bigger than the truth.

Social Impact AccountingCan we substantiate it?

+

Social Impact MarketingCan we communicate it responsibly and effectively?

Responsible impact communication should make the truth understandable and engaging, not make the claim bigger than the truth.

Social Impact Excellence

Social impact should be treated as a management discipline.

Impact should not live in an annual report. It should influence how an organisation is run.

Our Social Impact Excellence Framework looks at impact across five connected pillars.

PurposeWhy are we trying to create change?

LeadershipWho owns it and how is it led?

DataHow do we know what is happening?

DeliveryHow do we turn intention into results?

CommunicationHow do we explain the difference responsibly?

The Claims Code sits particularly strongly across Data and Communication, while its principles of integrity, evidence, judgement and accountability run through all five.

Explore Social Impact Excellence →

Verification

What if someone independent had actually checked the claim?

Financial information can be independently examined. We are exploring how credible third-party review could work for social impact claims too.

In development

We are exploring whether this could eventually support a recognisable mark showing that an Impact Report or important impact claim has been independently reviewed against transparent principles.

This is an idea being developed. It is not an existing certification, accreditation or assurance standard.

In the age of AI, knowing that a trusted professional has actually examined the evidence may become more valuable, not less.

AI & agents

When convincing claims become cheap, trust becomes more valuable.

AI is making it easier to collect information, analyse data, identify patterns and produce polished reports. Agents will increasingly perform parts of that process themselves.

That creates enormous opportunities. It also creates a problem.

Producing a convincing claim and establishing whether it deserves to be believed are not the same thing.

AI can help

Collect data

Analyse evidence

Identify patterns

Draft communications

AI can also

Repeat poor assumptions

Hide uncertainty

Overstate conclusions

Make weak evidence sound compelling

Humans still decide

What evidence to trust

What claim is justified

What remains uncertain

What to delegate

AI can increasingly perform analysis and actions.

Humans still need to decide what evidence is trustworthy, what claims are justified and what they are willing to delegate.

As technology becomes more capable, principles become more important, not less.

In time, the Social Impact Claims Code could provide useful principles not only for people, but for AI systems and agents increasingly involved in measuring and communicating impact.

Open impact

What if organisations learned from impact the way science learns from evidence?

Thousands of organisations are tackling poverty, health, education, inequality, environmental degradation and other difficult problems. Every day they learn things.

Too often those lessons remain trapped inside organisations, spreadsheets, funding applications and reports.

Scientific knowledge advances partly because evidence is shared, methods are scrutinised, findings are challenged and other people build on what has already been learned.

Not every piece of impact data can or should be public. Privacy, safeguarding, confidentiality, data protection and commercial considerations matter.

But where useful knowledge can responsibly be shared, there is enormous potential.

If organisations learn from each other faster, we may become better at solving difficult problems faster.

Evolving practice

Enduring principles. Evolving practice.

The Social Impact Claims Code should be stable enough for people to rely upon. But it should not pretend that every question has already been answered.

Truth · Integrity · Honesty · Fairness · Accountability

These foundations are intended to endure.

01New evidence02New methodologies03New technology04New forms of verification05New expectations06New questions created by AI and agents

The foundations of the Code should endure.
Its application should improve as we learn.

Being open to challenge does not make a principle-based framework weaker. It is how good principles survive contact with the real world.

Help shape it

We started the Code. We don’t think we should finish it alone.

Help shape the Social Impact Claims Code.

My Social Impact has initiated this work. We do not claim to be the sole authority on good impact practice.

We want the Code to be challenged, tested and improved by people with different expertise and experience.

We’d particularly like to hear from:

CharitiesBusinessesSocial enterprisesAccountantsFundersResearchersEvaluatorsTrusteesImpact practitionersMarketersCommunicatorsPeople with lived experience

01Challenge it.

02Tell us what we’ve missed.

03Tell us where you disagree.

04Give us examples that test the principles.

05Help us make it better.

If you work in this field and would be willing to be interviewed or contribute your perspective, we’d love to hear from you. Contact Chris or Marcus.

Chrischris@mysocialimpact.orgMarcusmarcus@mysocialimpact.org

Chris & Marcus
My Social Impact

Make the strongest claim the evidence allows.

No stronger.