Role and Objectives of the Social Performance Task Force

The Social Performance Task Force is an action-oriented group of over 100 members representing practitioners, donors, investors and raters worldwide. During the first year of the task force, the group focused on defining social performance, describing the different levels of social performance, creating basic communication pieces for the industry to understand social performance, and developed a training agenda for future work in social performance measurement and management. In the second year of engagement, the task force will:

1. Promote and support the management of social performance by MFIs
   
   
2. Work towards developing standards and guidelines for social performance
   
   
3. Create a common reporting format with the broad group of stakeholders
   
   
4. Assess the market demand for social performance information – who wants the information and what information is considered most relevant?  Determine the interest for the organizations so that the maximum of organizations have incentives to report.
   
   
5. Advocate the value, importance and imperative of social performance in the MF industry
   
   
6. Coordinate/Communicate/Disseminate information about global activities related to SP via the SP Resource Center and through materials to task force members to distribute throughout their regions.

The task force will serve as a forum for engagement around issues and questions that need task force member input for resolution as opposed to being a forum for general information exchange.

It will be important to involve a large group of practitioners in the dialogue and process of developing standards so it is not developed through a top down approach.  However, to be able to take an active part in this process and dialogue, there is a need for more training and capacity building of practitioners and support in developing SPM systems that would incorporate interests of different stakeholders being useful operationally. So there is a need to work simultaneously top down and bottom up – engaging stakeholders in the dialogue so that we all arrive at standards that will be consensus driven. The role of the task force should be to manage this process and make sure the interests of different stakeholders will meet in the end in a balanced way.

The SP Task Force Agenda: Objectives to be achieved by end 2007

The Task Force, working through its sub-committees and committee membership, and with the support of the CGAP Donor Social Performance Working Group aims at the achievement of the following results by end 2006.

1. The scaling-up training and mutual learning programs of the Imp-Act and CERISE consortia will be well under way. At least 10 regional and national MF networks will be in the process of building capacity of MFIs to manage and assess their own social performance through training and mutual learning.
   
   
2. The website of the ‘Social Performance Resource Center’ (hosted by the Microfinance Gateway with the aim to provide access to all social performance initiatives and findings) will have been tested and fully operational. It will aim at an average of 5000 downloaded pages per month by the Spring of 2007.
   
   
3. The Social Performance ‘Declaration of Principles’ will increase the number of signatories, from 50 in April 2006, to 150 by the end of 2006.
   
   
4. The MC Summit Meeting in Halifax, November 2006, will be used by task force members as an advocacy platform to engage more practitioners, donors, and investors to expect and promote management towards a double bottom line in microfinance.
   
   
5. A Glossary of Social Performance Terms will have been accepted by the task force, posted on the Social Performance Resource Center. A procedure will have been established for change or addition of terms.
   
   
6. Leading rating agencies will have agreed on a common framework for social performance reporting, auditing and rating.
   
   
7. The MIX will be in the process of adapting the MIX Market outreach reporting section according to the format that will be consistent with the Social Performance framework mentioned under objective 6.
   
   
8. Action-research on the link between Social and Financial Performance will have been formulated and funding committed for 2007. 
   
   
9. CGAP will have commissioned to the appropriate institution or persons the production of a Guidebook on Social Performance measurement, reporting, auditing and rating to be completed by Fall 2007.  The Guidebook is meant to describe the Social Performance ‘Assessment and Measurement’ toolkits that are available, including data presentation techniques that can be used by MFIs (for reporting) and rating agencies.
   
   
10. Plans are well under way to widen the scope of the CGAP Rating Fund so as to include social performance rating as a complement to financial rating.
    
    
11. A Social Performance Transparency Award Fund will have been (scheduled to be) established. The Fund will award MFIs for the quality of their reporting and openness to external verification and validation.

The Task Force will continue activities in 2007 and determine at its mid-year meeting if it continues to have a role or if it should be replaced in 2008 by Social Performance practitioner learning groups with a specific regional and/or national focus.