During the last decade microfinance has experienced impressive growth rates and the attention has been oriented to financial performance and growth, commercialization and overall increase of flow of resources to the sector. While social performance has for long been taken for granted, more recently the debate on the achievement of social objectives by MFIs has emerged as a result of different needs.
As social organizations, in fact, MFIs are characterized by a dual nature, that is applying business principles to achieve social ends. This has created an intrinsic tension within the sector; financial sustainability does not necessarily imply care to social performance.
Social performance is composed by the analysis of different dimensions, ranging from the intention of the institution, mission and goals, processes and inputs, internal systems and activities to outputs to impact.[1]  
 
Social performance is defined as the affective translation of an institution’s social mission into practice[2] and to achieve social goals globally recognized and accepted. The social objectives to which we refer are to reach the intended target (poor and excluded); to meet customers' needs and demand; to improve the lives of clients and their families; and to act responsibly towards staff, customers, communities and environment. In particular, the social performance focuses not only on results but also on the processes through which it is possible to achieve such results.

Impact refers to the changes in clients lives that can be directly attributed to the MFI. Scientific impact studies are very expensive, causal relationships are difficult to prove and are of limited use for institutions as not immediately translatable into management tools for improvements in operations.[3] Given these difficulties, there has been a change in approach, "from demonstrating the impact to improve the impact", mainly focusing on processes and systems and putting a stronger emphasis on social performance management.

Initiatives and Tools
One of the most successful initiatives is the creation in 2005 of the Social Performance Task Force, under the initiative of CGAP, Ford Foundation and Argidius Foundation who have collected several leaders of various initiatives related to social performance to share their experiences.
In 2009 Mix Market has also started to collect data on a set of core social performance indicators  in addition to the financial ones. Several tools for assessing the social performance have been developed by different actors, always based on the criteria and guidelines agreed in the SPTF. The Mix Market is a global, web-based, microfinance information platform that collects financial and operational from 1,900 MFIs worldwide.
CERISE SPI  which assesses the social performance of institutions by evaluating their intentions and actions.
MicroFinance Centre  has instead developed a Quality Audit Tool (QAT), a diagnostic that is aimed to be a practical tool to support MFIs to review the processes in place to achieve their social goals.
Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), developed by Grameen Foundation with the technical support of Mark Schreiner, who developed a method for creating national "poverty scorecards", using a similar technique to that used in credit scoring.



[1] Hashemi, S., Beyond good intentions: measuring the social performance of micro finance institutions, Focus Note, CGAP, 2007.  
[2] Campion, A., Linder, C. e Knotts, K. E., Putting social into performance management: a practice based guide for micro finance, Institute of Development Studies, 2008.
[3] Banerjee, Abhijit, Duflo, Esther, Glennerster Rachel e Kinnan Cynthia, The miracle of microfinance? Evidence from a randomized evaluation, Financial access initiative, 2009.