As Baillie Gifford Positive Change marks five years of reporting on impact, the team have enhanced their report. The strategy aims for it to be more transparent, to improve accountability and better reflect their long-term thinking.
As in previous years, Baillie Gifford Positive Change use the positive chains, based on the theory of change, as a way to evidence each company’s progress in delivering positive change. You will notice some additional information on portfolio holdings in this report which marks five years since inception of the strategy. For the 18 companies that have been in the portfolio for five years: — they have included their Positive Change hypothesis, which outlines how they expect companies’ products and services to deliver positive change, and why they believe this represents a good investment opportunity. They have expanded their reporting to include commentary on progress over five years. Just like investment returns, the Positive Change team believe impact should be measured over longer periods of time. By analysing five years of data, they are able to better monitor and illustrate to readers the progress companies are making towards achieving impact objectives.
You will see illustrations of the best data series Positive Change have over five years for companies. In many cases this tells a positive story about accelerating impact, but in others it shows where progress has been slower, and they aim to highlight that, too, in this report. In addition to providing information on impact progress over five years, they have included metrics for measuring their investment objective to ensure they are accountable to the philosophy that investment returns and impact are complementary. The team have provided some commentary on the real-world context around the challenges companies are solving, with a focus on how the world is changing and what needs to happen going forward. They are excited by the evolution of their impact reporting and encouraged to see more and more companies publishing data on their impact.