Impact Validation: Why Entrepreneurs Welcome the Scrutiny
Founder of Impact Forecast
At Impact Forecast, our CIF Validation service delivers a rigorous, third-party review of your Climate Impact Forecast. It’s not just a seal of approval, it’s a process that entrepreneurs consistently describe as one of the most valuable steps in their impact journey.
Why Validation Matters
A self-assessment, despite training and coaching the entrepreneurs to make them, is not always completely accurate. It might:
- Miss a crucial energy requirement, waste stream etc.
- Use misread data from external sources.
- Contain calculation and unit conversion errors.
- Overestimate avoided emissions.
- Have methodological issues e.g. scope and functional unit.
And in the world of quantifying impact, these small slips can lead to big consequences. Without validation, a company risks misinforming itself and its stakeholders about its true impact.
This can undermine internal decision-making, skew funding strategies, and delay necessary pivots. Worse, it opens the door to unintentional greenwashing, eroding trust in an innovation and by association, the technology it embodies.
Validation solves this by offering independent, expert verification. It checks every calculation. Challenges every assumption. And issues a verdict on whether the impact is valid, positive, and significant.
A Process as Demanding as It Is Empowering
You might expect entrepreneurs to dread this process. After all, it’s designed to challenge their work, and sometimes their funding is on the line.
But here’s the surprising part: they love it.
- Average rating: 9 out of 10
- 94% would recommend it to their peers
- This includes users whose forecast was not valid or positive
The CIF Validation process includes:
- Two 30-minute online calls with an accredited impact expert.
- A comprehensive checklist and written feedback.
- A revision period, leading to a final validation report and shareable certificate.
It’s not just a hoop to jump through. It’s a milestone that often transforms how entrepreneurs understand and communicate their climate value.
“What I liked the most about validation is how much I learned during the process.”
“The methodology was very pleasing to my engineering way of thinking.”
“Being challenged by an expert and to have the opportunity as a small company to obtain a validation of our impact forecast.”
“We are already using our results in our pitch deck.”
“This is a new tool that re-shapes our business model by making our product world-class.”
What you get
Validation Report
Validation Certificate
Outcome Labels
And if you’ve already been through the process once? We offer Validation Updates for modified innovations and Validation Repairs for forecasts that only need a little more work.
For Investors, Programs and Accelerators
Validation doesn’t just help entrepreneurs, it is also used as a lean yet powerful due diligence tool that
- Confirms that impact claims meet standards of transparency and accuracy.
- Reduces the risk of funding innovations that later appear not to reduce emissions.
- Supports decision makers with verified data and explanatory impact stories.
Validation is typically the final stage of our Impact Framework, ensuring that decision-makers are working from a level playing field of high-quality, comparable results.
