Impact Quality of Earnings

No Artifact,
No Claim.

ImpactQoE applies private equity Quality of Earnings discipline to impact measurement. Every claim scored on a 0–100 Evidence Quality Scale. Claims without system-generated artifacts default to zero — and are quarantined before they reach a funder conversation.

Commission a Review Read the Doctrine

The Founding Doctrine

Impact investing has a greenwashing problem. Not because organizations are dishonest. Because there is no underwriting standard.

In traditional private equity due diligence, reported revenue is stress-tested before it is accepted: is it recurring or one-time? Cash or accrual? Attributable to the business or to timing? That discipline is called Quality of Earnings. It exists because the cost of misreading revenue is a misallocated investment.

Impact claims receive no equivalent treatment. Organizations assert that they have served thousands of beneficiaries, reduced recidivism, or generated economic mobility — and funders receive these assertions as narrative evidence, not evidence evidence. The result is capital allocated on the basis of what can be compellingly narrated rather than what can actually be demonstrated.

ImpactQoE exists to install the underwriting layer that has been missing from the sector since the impact investing field emerged.

Core Doctrine 01

No Artifact, No Claim

Every impact claim must be supported by a system-generated, third-party-verifiable record. Claims without such a record default to an EQS score of zero. They are quarantined — not deleted, but not shared with funders until the artifact exists.

Core Doctrine 02

Evidence Before Narrative

The ImpactQoE Evidence Quality Scorecard governs what goes into funder-facing documents. Stories, testimonials, and qualitative accounts have their place — but not in the evidentiary layer of a due diligence package.

Core Doctrine 03

Viability Is Not Optional

For hybrid ventures, impact claims that are structurally disconnected from the commercial engine are a capital risk signal, not just a measurement gap. The Viability lens surfaces that risk before it becomes a deployment decision.

Core Doctrine 04

Transparency Over Perfection

The Impact Traceability Matrix retains quarantined claims alongside active ones. An organization that shows its evidence gaps — and an evidence-building plan to close them — is more credible to an institutional funder than one that presents only its strongest claims.

The Analytical Framework

Three lenses. Applied in sequence. Every claim must pass all three.

The three lenses are not independent — they are sequential gates. Failing the first lens produces an EQS of zero regardless of how strong the second and third would have scored. The sequence mirrors PE due diligence logic: establish the evidentiary foundation before evaluating strategic alignment.

Artifact

"Is there a system-generated, tamper-resistant record that directly supports this claim?"

A qualifying artifact is produced by a system or institution not under the control of the reporting organization at the time of production. Electronic health records, government case management data, third-party payroll verification, financial institution transaction logs — these qualify. Self-reported surveys and internal databases do not satisfy the Artifact requirement alone.

Gate: Binary. No artifact = EQS 0. Claim quarantined.

Viability

"Is this impact commercially colinear — does delivering it make the business stronger?"

Designed specifically for hybrid ventures. A claim passes Viability if delivering the impact outcome generates revenue, reduces cost, or builds commercial capabilities for the venture's commercial engine. Claims that describe mission activities structurally disconnected from the commercial engine receive a Viability score of zero — a significant capital risk signal.

Sub-questions: Revenue-generating? Cost-reducing? Population structurally separate?

Liability

"Does this claim introduce legal, reputational, or measurement risk under institutional scrutiny?"

The Liability lens identifies claims that use attribution language without experimental design support, involve data that may be subject to privacy regulation (HIPAA, FERPA, ECOA), or describe outcomes in regulatory domains where the assertion may trigger compliance review. Flagged claims are packaged into a Counsel Question Pack — not published until legally cleared.

Flags trigger Counsel Bridge routing. Not deleted — held for legal review.

The Evidence Quality Scorecard

0 to 100. Five dimensions. One defensible number.

The EQS score is calculated claim-by-claim, not organization-wide. Aggregating across claims without individual scoring produces a misleading composite. Every claim in your impact portfolio receives its own score — and its own institutional readiness determination.

Dimension Weight Max pts

Artifact Presence 30% 30

Evidence Recency 15% 15

Attribution Discipline 20% 20

Viability Alignment 20% 20

Liability Clearance 15% 15

Total EQS Score 100% 100

80–100

LP-Grade

Meets institutional fund reporting standards. Suitable for LP disclosure and regulated impact reporting.

60–79

Institutionally Ready

Suitable for philanthropic, CDFI, and impact fund contexts. May need refinement for LP-grade reporting.

40–59

Conditionally Ready

Suitable for limited-diligence philanthropic funders. Not recommended for institutional investors or CDFI underwriting.

0–39

Not Funder-Ready

Claim is quarantined. Evidence-building plan required before any institutional funder communication.

"We do not help organizations tell
better stories. We help them build
better evidence."

The story follows the evidence. The ImpactQoE Evidence Quality Scorecard determines what goes into a funder conversation — not the quality of the narrative around it.

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Who Needs ImpactQoE

Four stakeholder classes. One shared problem: impact claims that haven't been stress-tested.

Hybrid Venture Founders

You are building a case for institutional capital and your impact claims haven't been stress-tested.

Most hybrid venture founders discover their evidence gaps during a live funder due diligence process — not before it. ImpactQoE scores your claim portfolio before you are in a capital conversation, gives you an evidence-building plan for quarantined claims, and produces the Impact Traceability Matrix that replaces your self-authored impact narrative with a structured, independently scored document.

Start with the ImpactQoE Evidence Assessment — $15K–$35K

Impact Fund Managers

You need to report impact to your LPs and your investees are using different methodologies for the same claims.

ImpactQoE solves the portfolio aggregation problem. By applying the same EQS scoring rubric and IRIS+/SDG taxonomy crosswalk across all investees, you produce a portfolio-level ITM that aggregates impact claims on a consistent, auditable basis — replacing the annual exercise of manually reconciling self-reported narratives from twenty organizations using twenty different measurement frameworks.

Commission a Portfolio ImpactQoE Assessment — custom scope

Philanthropic Allocators & CDFIs

You are about to deploy capital into an organization whose impact claims you cannot independently verify.

StratzGroup commissions an ImpactQoE Pre-Deployment Review on your behalf before you finalize a capital commitment. We score the organization's impact claims against the EQS rubric, identify any Liability flags requiring counsel review, and produce an Impact Traceability Matrix for your due diligence file. The cost is a fraction of the structural risk of a misaligned deployment.

Pre-Deployment Review — $10K–$25K, commissioned by the funder

Accelerators & Intermediaries

Your portfolio organizations each have different evidence standards — and you need one consistent language across all of them.

ImpactQoE is available for portfolio-wide licensing, giving your entire cohort access to the same EQS scoring rubric, the same IRIS+ and SDG taxonomy mappings, and the same Impact Traceability Matrix format. One evidence standard across all portfolio organizations — and a consistent, aggregable dataset for your own board and funder reporting.

Portfolio License — contact for custom scope and pricing

Every Engagement Delivers

Six specific outputs. None of them a slide deck of recommendations.

Output 01

Impact Traceability Matrix (ITM)

Every active impact claim mapped to its supporting artifact, EQS score, IRIS+ metric code, SDG goal alignment, and Active / Quarantined status. The primary funder due diligence document.

Output 02

Evidence Quality Scorecard

Claim-by-claim EQS scores with annotated dimension-level analysis. Institutional readiness tier for each claim. Foundation of the ITM.

Output 03

Evidence Vault Index

Numbered inventory of every L1 and L2 artifact with file locations, access instructions, and custody notes. Designed for funder data room submission.

Output 04

Impact-to-EBITDA Bridge

Where applicable — quantification of impact delivery's commercially demonstrable value: retained revenue, reduced acquisition cost, talent retention premium, regulatory risk reduction.

Output 05

Evidence-Building Plan

Specific, time-bounded roadmap for activating quarantined claims — identifying which artifacts are missing, how to obtain them, and the expected timeline for each claim to reach institutional readiness.

Output 06

Counsel Question Pack

All Liability-flagged claims packaged for legal review. Watermarked: Legal-information only. Counsel review required. Not distributed externally until cleared.

"The No Artifact, No Claim discipline does not punish organizations for having evidence gaps. It creates a specific, actionable roadmap for closing them — before a funder finds them first."

ImpactQoE White Paper · StratzGroup / ImpactStratz · March 2026

Taxonomy Integration

IRIS+ and UN SDG aligned by default. Aggregation-ready from day one.

ImpactQoE's scoring logic is taxonomy-agnostic — a claim about job creation is evaluated on the same Artifact, Viability, and Liability criteria as a claim about food security. But every scored claim is mapped to its IRIS+ metric code and UN SDG target, because that mapping is what makes the ITM legible to institutional funders who aggregate at portfolio level.

The crosswalk also identifies discrepancies between your internal measurement definitions and the IRIS+ standard — gaps that would prevent your data from being aggregated into a portfolio-level report if not caught before you are in a live capital raise.

IRIS+ Theme Areas Covered

Employment Generation Health Improvement Housing Education & Training Financial Services Food Security Environment Community Development

Primary SDG Alignments

SDG 1 — No Poverty SDG 2 — Zero Hunger SDG 3 — Good Health SDG 4 — Quality Education SDG 8 — Decent Work SDG 10 — Reduced Inequalities SDG 11 — Sustainable Cities SDG 16 — Peace, Justice

Common Liability Flags by Domain

Health Outcomes

HIPAA authorization; attribution without clinical design; outcome vs. service-delivery conflation

Financial Inclusion

ECOA compliance; fair lending implications; redlining risk in geographic impact claims

Criminal Justice

Recidivism definition variance across jurisdictions; attribution risk; data source governance

Education & Training

FERPA restrictions; outcome vs. completion rate distinction; employer verification requirements

Commission a Review

Evidence gaps found before a capital raise cost days. Found during one, they cost deals.

ImpactQoE engagements are fixed-fee and produce specific, institutionally defensible deliverables. Select the pathway most relevant to your current situation below — or use the form to describe your situation and we will recommend the appropriate entry point.

ImpactQoE Evidence Assessment

$15,000 – $35,000 · For hybrid venture founders pre-raise

Pre-Deployment Review

$10,000 – $25,000 · Commissioned by capital providers

Portfolio ImpactQoE

Custom scope · For fund managers and intermediaries

Framework License

Annual license · For accelerators deploying across cohorts

No Artifact,No Claim.