Thinking impact

What does your organisation want to achieve? It’s vital to invest time in thinking about this question, because it should shape all of your work and help you to judge your success.

A key strategic decision

Deciding what impact you want to have is the most important question for your organisation. It is a key part of strategic planning that will drive the direction of your organisation. It is also the starting point for designing individual projects.

Choosing your impact

Whether you are developing a new strategy or scoping a new piece of work, think about your impact. Consider:

who or what you want to make a difference for
what needs exist, and are not being met by other agencies
the particular change you want to bring about.

Journey of change

If the change you want is likely to take a long time or represents a huge leap for your beneficiaries, identify the steps that need to be achieved along the way. This journey of change can be very helpful. By describing these interim impacts, you can:

consider what you or others might need to do to make them happen
track and show the progress you make as you work towards your ultimate goal.

You can use the journey of change idea in a simple way, for example listing the two or three key stages that most users go through. You can also make it more sophisticated, for example by identifying multiple pathways that different user types are likely to follow, moving through a wide range of different services offered by you and other agencies.

Outcomes stars

One practical expression of the journey of change idea is ‘outcomes stars’.

Example: Outcomes Star: supporting change in homelessness and related services journey of change for service users

Stages 1-2	Stuck: “leave me alone”
Stages 3-4	Accepting help: “I want someone else to sort things out”
Stages 5-6	Believing: “I can make a difference. It’s up to me as well”
Stages 7-8	Learning: “I’m learning how to do this”
Stages 9-10	Self-reliance: “I can manage without help from the project”

AIDA

AIDA, a model of engagement used in marketing, can also provide a useful framework for thinking about the journey of change service users may need to take:

awareness (of an issue)
interest
desire (to do something about it)
action.

Breadth and depth

Think about the breadth and depth of impact you would like to achieve. For instance, it’s likely to be quite easy to raise awareness of something amongst lots of people, but prompting them to take action or even develop an interest in your topic, will take more resources. So you will need to weigh up the number of people you can reach against the number of stages you can help to move them along the journey of change.

Once you have identified the difference you want to make, you can plan your impact.

Everyday impact thinking

Thinking about impact shouldn’t just be reserved for big picture moments. It should infuse all aspects of your organisation. Encouraging all your staff and volunteers to think about impact in everything they do will enable your organisation to deliver great impact. The idea of impact leadership can help to make this happen.