Our 2023 Impact Report is out! Our Head of Global Impact, Glo Guevarra sat down with us to introduce the new features we incorporated into this year's report. Discover how we’ve deepened our focus on real impact and what sets this year’s report apart.
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The following transcript has been edited for clarity and ease of publication:
Interviewer: So, thank you for coming to this interview. I wanted to ask you about the new impact report of Boldr, your 2023 impact report just came out and I'm curious, what did you do differently?
Glo: Thank you well, first of all, this impact report took a lot longer to produce than we had anticipated. The last impact report that we made before this was released in February of last year, whereas we released this towards the end of 2024.
That meant we took more time to create an impact report that communicated what real impact meant for us. I'm actually excited to get into the four ways that we did this impact report differently from the previous two in the last two years.
Interviewer: So what are those four things you did differently in this year's 2023 impact report?
Glo: So the first thing is we measured what mattered. We intentionally delayed the impact report until after I finished an impact measurement and management program in Oxford because we didn't want to fall into the trap of simply counting for the sake of meaning.
A lot of impact reports in the past used a lot of metrics that, you know, we would communicate a lot of numbers around, you know, the people that we've helped, beneficiaries, how many partners, how many communities. And really these numbers don't tell a deeper story, it just talks about numbers essentially, out of context that doesn't really talk about long-term, sustainable impact.
Glo: That is, I would say surface-level impact because on the one hand, you're able to quantify how much of an impact you're able to make in a community, but it doesn't tell you how long, how deep, and how lasting that impact is. So, what we've done differently now is instead of just counting and measuring how many people participated in, let's say a training program, we measured what was their income after they've participated, what was their likelihood of getting a job, or how many of them were able to move out of being unemployed to being employed.
That's one of the ways that we've measured what matters, not saying that the other numbers don't matter, but I think it's important to really measure whether or not your intervention or in our case, our Theory of Change does make a material impact in the lives of the people that we help, even after the intervention has been delivered.
Glo: Another thing that we wanted to measure is, you know, yes, our team members do stay with us. Yes, we're proud of our retention rate being 90%, but what does that mean for their livelihood? Does that mean that they're able to move up the ranks, does that mean that their income increases over time? I think these are the real things that matter, especially when you talk about an organization that invests deeply in a person's career development that should be something that they are able to experience and enjoy for themselves and their families. And it should be reflective of their quality of life as well.
And most importantly, we included metrics that are relevant to our clients in the previous impact reports. We focused very heavily on the community, which is great, but I think our impact is holistic. We don't only help the community, we also impact the lives of our team members and make sure that our clients succeed because that is the virtuous cycle that makes our purpose possible.
Glo: The way that we were measuring the impact for our clients is pretty straightforward. It's how long have they been with us? Over the span of our relationship on an average, they would stay with us for about 4 to 5 years, we've had some clients that stay longer than that, but I think that is a testament to our ability to nurture and deliver a partnership that they want to continue with, and at the same time, grow alongside us.
Then of course, we talked about the measurement of how our clients grew over time. We've started with three clients when Boldr started, which moved to 20 to 50, and now today, we've serviced over a 100 clients across multiple continents in North America, Europe, and Australia.
Glo: The second thing that we did that is very different from all the other impact reports is practice radical transparency, what I mean by that is that we published, what our negative materiality is and what our negative impact is, which you would typically not see in a lot of impact reports, because the purpose of that is to showcase the good that you've created and not shine a light on but not so good things, but we believe that if you really wanna make an impact, that is systemic, like the changes, and systemic challenges in the industry, you have to also acknowledge the harms and the negative things that, we as a company intend in like, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
So we have dedicated a whole chapter to our negative materiality or impact, but it is the reality of our industry, but on the other side, we're also talking about in the impact report, how we're mitigating these negative impacts. This is the first time that we're communicating this level of transparency, and we believe that you know our partners and clients would honor this level of transparency and hope that it would create more trust because we want to do good, and at the same time, start with the areas where we aren't doing so good in it.
Glo: The third way that we're doing this differently is by sharing stories of real people and real individuals. The last impact reports were a culmination, or I would say, more like a catalog of activities and projects that didn't really focus on the journey of individuals and how we were able to make their lives better.
Glo: This time, our impact report shared individual snippets and stories of people whose lives have been improved because of a living wage or someone who found meaningful employment in a rural community in Hazyview, and we were also able to share some testimonials and personal experiences from clients who we were able to essentially they make their lives much better, because of the teams that we were able to build for them.
Interviewer: That was a great wrap up of what you have been doing with your 2023 impact report. Now, if you could use this impact report in a way to impact others or make it of use to others, how would you do this?
Glo: Sure. I think that's such a fun question because a lot of companies publish impact reports for the sake of publishing them and it's good usually for an audience of like-minded companies, but my hope for this impact report is that more companies who have not exercised this level of transparency or just don't know where to start talking about how they do business in a way that's that's like this comprehensive will start to consider it. More often than not, an impact report or sustainability report is something that companies do out of compliance, but I think it serves a deeper purpose, more than publicity more than marketing, and even as a sales tool.
Glo: This is lobbying the tool or mechanism to get more companies to see the proof in the pudding, and by that I mean that it is possible to do good and to do it well or to be able to deliver client results or business results while being able to do better for the world. I think there are just a lot of benefits that can come out of being transparent and honest and open about what you do as a company even and especially when it comes to your negative and positive impact, just having one sort of place to find all of that and even having a commitment to do this on an annual basis. We hope that in the succeeding impact reports that we produce in the coming years, it just gets better and better, and that the metrics we produce become more and more meaningful.
Interviewer: And where can we find a copy of this impact report?
Glo: Great, it is on our website. If you go to www.boldrimpact.com/impact you can get yourself a copy of the impact report. It's in our email signatures, it's everywhere, it's on a LinkedIn, we have a month-long campaign that is gonna be focused on just making sure that we get the word out that that this exists and hopefully we get more you know, people curious about it and our companies interested to start telling their story about how they're making an impact in the world.
Click here to download our 2023 Impact Report.
Glo Guevarra is the Head of Impact and Content at Boldr and she holds a postgraduate degree in Labor, Activism, and Development from SOAS University of London.