Opportunity International

The challenge

Opportunity International (Opportunity) provides people living in poverty with access to loans, financial training and savings so that they can work their way out of poverty and build sustainable livelihoods. They provide financial inclusion opportunities to agribusinesses, schools, and marginalised individuals across a range of countries around the world.

NPC was commissioned to support Opportunity to develop a best-in-class impact measurement and management (IMM) framework and an impact report to capture their work. The dual challenge was to develop an IMM approach that stood up to industry benchmarks and supported the frequent tracking and updating of social impact for internal and external audiences, while also informing strategic thinking at an organisational level and ultimately supporting fundraising from impact and institutional investment sources.

A key output of the project was Opportunity International’s 2021 Impact Report which reflected this journey towards improved impact measurement and communication.

NPC’s approach

We supported Opportunity through a 9-month process that covered:

• Desk research and internal stakeholder consultation to understand the basis for Opportunity’s existing program activities and monitoring approaches.
• Benchmarking of impact reporting practices in the sector to identify and recommend best-in-class approaches for Opportunity to consider.
• Reviewing and proposing program-level and organisational-level Theories of Change that encapsulated the activities, outcomes and impacts achieved through Opportunity’s work.
• Developing a recommendation for impact measurement using our Five Types of Data framework, including how data collection could be prioritised and implemented.

After this first phase of data collection, benchmarking and measurement recommendations, NPC created an impact report for Opportunity that encapsulated the organisation’s breadth of programs through key metrics and qualitative data.

The result

NPC’s work played a key role in bringing together insights from a large network organisation and helping to benchmark its work against competitors. We have supported Opportunity to continue to prioritise ongoing improvements to its measurement practice and provided a series of recommendations to strengthen it further. With the outputs of an organisational Theory of Change, impact measurement framework and data collection recommendations, Opportunity is now in a position to be a sector leader on impact measurement. The organisation has gone on to use the 2021 impact report as the template for its ongoing annual reporting that shares Opportunity’s compelling impact journey with its donor and impact investor audiences.

The product of our engagement with NPC became a key pillar of Opportunity’s strategic approach to communicating and partnering with impact investors and catalytic capital providers. The impact report is now our most effective instrument to present our platform, and the value added that Opportunity’s programs bring to this audience, which includes private and public sector players.

Mauricio Rincon, Managing Director, Capital Solutions, Opportunity International