For example, the Hataraku Fund has been working with CureApp, a digital therapeutics company, to embed sustainability into its core management system. This includes integrating financial and non-financial capital management, ESG policies, and IMM practices. CureApp monitors key financial, impact, and social, environmental, and governance (ESG) indicators, discussing results in a Sustainability Committee comprising board members and an external advisor from Hataraku Fund. These discussions inform critical board decisions, ensuring that impact remains central to the company’s operations. Additionally, the company issued its first impact report in January 2025 to disclose its results and engage effectively with investors as it moves toward an Impact IPO. Measuring Impact In Huang and Takatsuka’s Childcare Support Fund, they approached impact measurement and management (IMM) in a highly customized way, conducting the process independently. However, they soon recognized a critical gap: the IMM framework they developed lacked alignment with global standards, making it challenging to establish a common language that could benefit the broader market. The co-managers realized that creating a standardized approach would serve their investees more effectively and support the wider community by fostering shared understanding and collaboration. Equally important, they believed IMM should not be driven solely by the needs of investors but by the needs of the investee. The Hataraku Fund’s Theory of Change (ToC) and Logic Model (see Appendix) includes impact assessments across the investment lifecycle, starting even before the investment decision, with estimations of potential impact and negative risks. IMM continues throughout the investment period, with regular assessments, and culminates in the recovery phase, where impact is analyzed retrospectively to inform future strategies. The goal of having IMM throughout the investment term is part of the Fund’s ToC, but how successful is the Fund at implementing and measuring it? Often, organizations with the best intentions to capture impact end up wasting resources on unhelpful measurement approaches, believing they are doing it correctly. 19,20 In 2021, SIIF participated in Impact Frontiers’s first Asian cohort to improve its IMM practices, particularly updating its impact rating framework to be more coherent. During this process, the Hataraku Fund updated its impact rating framework and criteria
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Ten Years in the Making
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