From profit to impact: tracking where the money flows
Published date: 26 November 2025
Medium article by Matthew Dunn, GRI Standards Manager
As business decisions increasingly shape global sustainability challenges and solutions, companies’ responsibilities extend far beyond generating financial returns. Profit may signal performance, but it does not reveal whether an organization’s activities contribute more broadly to resilience, fairness or long-term stability.
In this latest Medium article, Matthew Dunn explores why reporting must encompass more than enterprise value to reflect impacts on people and the planet – and how aligning financial information with real-world outcomes is fast becoming essential:
Focusing on monetary flows allows organizations to turn numbers into a meaningful narrative, showing stakeholders not just what you earn, but how that income circulates across society. For companies that act early, this becomes a new definition of performance; moving beyond profit to measure impact, resilience, and long-term value creation.
Matthew Dunn, GRI Standards ManagerTo address this emerging reality, a GRI Standard for Monetary Flows is being developed, with a public comment open until 17 December. This major update to the Economic Performance Standard (GRI 201) aims to reflect how an organization’s financial activities cascade to impact stakeholders, society and the environment, and will support companies in communicating impacts that extend far beyond their balance sheets.