Insaan’s Philanthropic Return on Investment (PROI) consists of the aggregate benefit to individuals and society as a whole that is generated from an investment in a venture with a philanthropic aim. Such returns vary from venture to venture, but generally have the following characteristics:

• The people benefiting from the investment (the end-users) can describe clearly, in their own words, precise improvements in their daily lives as a result of the investment
• The return affects a number of people in more or less the same way, that is to say, certain benefits for individuals and the group can be predicted or at least identified, and measured
• The benefits are such that, when a context is provided, the investors would agree that they indeed represent positive change in people’s lives, and a good return on their investment

Philanthropic return cannot be measured through a simple index. And while attempts have been made at developing congregate index to measure philanthropic impact, none of the existing approaches measure the diverse impacts of philanthropic giving in a way that is satisfactory to both those granting funds and the grantees.

PROI is represented as a summary of returns, that is, impacts on human lives and society as a whole, through a diverse set of returns. These returns can be broadly categorized into four sectors:

• Qualitative impacts on individuals (e.g. changes in opinion of one’s power to make it on their own)
• Quantitative impacts on individuals (e.g. raised income)
• Qualitative impacts on society as a whole (e.g. people are aware of their human rights)
• Quantitative impacts on society as a whole (e.g. improvement in girls’ enrollment in school)

Insaan’s PROI reports address each of these impacts for all of its funds. Although certain funds are more suited to certain areas of return, every fund has some impact at every level.

Insaan’s reports include the data in forms that best express the particular impacts of the project, whether these be graphs of changes over time, photo journals, diagrams drawn by the end-users, or statistical estimates of scaled-up impact.