Impact assessments help funders, grant-makers and companies to understand and evaluate the impact of their social investments in programmes and projects on their target beneficiaries or society. The findings of an assessment also help funders and companies to make evidence-based decisions in implementation and identify hurdles, allowing for programme continuity, scale, sustainability, efficiency, etc.

According to the January 2021 amendment, impact assessment is mandatory for companies with a CSR budget of INR 10 crore or more in any fiscal year and all projects with outlays of INR 1 crore or more. These impact assessments must be undertaken by an independent agency.

However, it is suggested as best practise that impact assessment be undertaken for all projects as standard procedure,. Especially long term projects.

Yes. As per Rule No. 8, if companies have multi-year programmes (say 3 years), impact assessment needs to be conducted after completion of three years of the programme. Additionally, a follow up assessment needs to be conducted one year after the completion of the programme to better understand the programme’s after effects.

However, if programmes are renewed or scaled up after each financial year, they would be treated as individual single year programmes, and separate impact assessments should be taken up every year.

Companies or their CSR initiatives cannot conduct impact assessments (selfassessment) on their own. An independent agency must be engaged for the assessment.

Yes, impact assessment related expenditure may be booked as a CSR expense as long as it does not exceed 5% of the total CSR spending or INR 50,00,000, whichever is less.

The limit is applicable on the total CSR budget of the financial year.

Under the amended rules, “Administrative overheads” will now mean expenses incurred by the company for ‘general management and administration’ of Corporate Social Responsibility functions in the company but shall not include the expenses directly incurred for the designing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of a particular Corporate Social Responsibility project or programme.

Further, a Company undertaking impact assessment may book the expenditure towards Corporate Social Responsibility for that financial year, which shall not exceed five percent of the total CSR expenditure for that financial year or fifty lakh rupees, whichever is less.

Thus, in our opinion, cost for researchers/consulting is neither part of the INR 50 lakh cap, nor the 5% cap on Admin expenditure

The project should have completed at least one year. If it is an on-going project of three years, it would make sense to study impact only on completion of three years.