About the MultiCapital Scorecard™

The MultiCapital Scorecard (MCS) is a free and open-source management tool (a public good made available under a Creative Commons license) that organizations and other human social systems (municipalities, nation states, etc.) can use to measure, manage and report their performance in a fully integrated (Triple Bottom Line) way. In principle, the MCS is based on the idea that performance is best understood in terms of what an organization’s or population’s impacts on vital capitals are relative to entity-specific and context-based sustainability norms. Managing performance, therefore, boils down to managing impacts on vital capitals, a basic tenet of multicapitalism.

The main theory of performance behind the MCS, then, is that in order to perform well, an organization, city, etc. must not put either the sufficiency of vital capitals or the well-being of those who depend on them (stakeholders) at risk. In the case of internal economic/financial capitals, for example, the relevant norms or standards for a business might consist of sector-specific net income targets that at least cover the cost of capital (lower limits); for human, social/relationship or constructed capitals, they might also take the form of minimally sufficient levels of capital production or maintenance (again, lower limits); and for natural capitals, they will typically consist of not to exceed levels of consumption or degradation (upper limits). And because performance also depends on both local and global conditions that will almost always vary by organization, the MCS is context-based — no two organizations, cities, etc. and their circumstances are alike, and so performance accounting should be applied accordingly.

Indeed, the MCS is the world’s first and only context-based integrated measurement, management and reporting system that makes it possible to assess performance across all aspects of the Triple Bottom Line in terms of impacts on vital capitals. It is the only system extant, that is, that can help answer the questions all organizations and communities should be asking themselves: How much is enough to be sustainable and are we?