On the Impact Central accelerator, we dedicate a few weeks to modules specifically on impact. These modules are designed to introduce you to best practices and important concepts, as well as providing practical tools and resources that will give you confidence, ultimately equipping your business to make progress in managing all things impact.

Session One takes place in week 2, when Joshua Eyre, our Head of Impact, introduces the framework we use and leads a group workshop. This helps to build solid foundations for how you approach impact. Following the workshop, Joshua provides a series of one-to-one sessions with every start-up, in order to help with anything you need support on.

The second impact module comes in week 9, just before showcase, when Joshua connects the dots between all you’ve learned on strategy, branding and communications, in relation to impact. This process builds confidence for showcase and aids you in forming a plan for integrating impact across your business as you move forward.

OUR IMPACT FRAMEWORK

Impact Central’s Impact Curriculum is built around 5 focus areas that every impact start-up needs. Included below is a description of each of these areas and what your business will get out of them.

1.     UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

The first step for any impact start-up is understanding the problem that needs addressed. There are usually several perspectives to every issue, therefore understanding how different people experience the problem, and how others are looking to address it, is crucial in developing an effective and scalable approach to relieving it.

A good way to approach this is to:

–       Speak to individuals who have personal experience of the negative effects of the problem you are addressing. These people may be your target customer, or those who can be impacted by what you are doing.

–       Connect with organisations who are already working on the issue from a different angle. This will help you to understand and learn from their encounters with individuals who have first-hand experience of the issue you are looking to solve. These organisations could be charities, non-profits, academics, policy makers, or even other impact entrepreneurs.

–       Look online for research, articles, blogs or books about your focus area.

2.     DEFINING YOUR IMPACT WITH PRECISION

Once you understand the problem you are trying to address, it will be easier to precisely define the impact you are aiming to have, as well as how you will do it. For this stage of the process, we will complete a group exercise using the Impact Management Project’s Five Dimensions of Impact, a tool we find extremely useful when it comes to accurately refining and defining the impact you want your business to have in the world.

This step also includes creating a ‘theory of change’ for your start-up. This is beneficial for strategy and can also come in handy in communications with various stakeholders. Working through your theory of change will help you to answer some critical questions, such as:

–       What precisely is it that you want to change?

–       How will your activities contribute to this change?

–       How can you be confident that your activities will lead to the change you want?

–       How will you know when that change has happened?

3.     MODELLING YOUR IMPACT & SETTING TARGETS

While steps 1 and 2 are all about getting clear on your goals and strategy, step 3 gets into the nitty gritty, practical side: aligning your impact with your business plans, processes and ‘unit economics’.

We will begin to create a model including data and projections from your business plan. Through this you can start to see what the impact outcomes could be and how this could change, depending what direction your business takes.

Some of the questions we will work through together include:

–       What is the relationship between your business growing commercially and in terms of impact?

–       Will you create a certain amount of impact for a certain amount of revenue or sales?

–       Does your product or service create impact immediately, or does the impact grow over time or with repeat purchases?

–       Will you create more impact based on the number of people you hire or train?

4.     COMMUNICATING YOUR IMPACT

Once you have worked through the first 3 steps, you’ll no doubt want to tell the whole world about your exciting business and the impact it will create. For communicating your impact, there are 2 main areas we focus on: messaging and channels.

–       Messaging

We will focus on integrating impact into your brand communications in a way that feels natural and authentic to your customers, while also considering what will resonate with other important stakeholders, such as investors, those in the public sector, or experts on your impact areas. We will draw on examples of organisations who do this well, identify the principles they follow and explore how you could use these in your communications.

–       Channels and audiences

Successful comms involves careful consideration of the channels you will use and the audiences you are aiming to influence. The channels you choose will depend on who you are trying to reach and what you want them to do. We will discuss how to build your comms plan around defined objectives, such as ensuring your website has all the relevant info in the right places, using LinkedIn for recruitment or marketing on Instagram.

5.     MEASURING YOUR IMPACT

Coming in at step 5 in our framework is impact measurement and evaluation. Being at the end does not mean it is the least important, however – in some ways this is the most important step! It comes last because working through the first 4 steps will put you in a great position to know what to measure and how you can do this efficiently. This step focuses on 2 key questions:

–       What will you measure?

This is closely tied with steps 2, 3 and 4. Once you are crystal clear on what you are aiming to achieve and want to talk about, we can identify precise indicators to collect the data that will support your story.

–       How will you measure it?

We’ll help you develop a plan (aka ‘methodology’, if you want to get technical) to get the information you need to show that you are achieving impact. How we do this will differ depending on what your business focuses on; we may support you in developing questionnaires/surveys, setting a baseline or informing/gathering impact stories for different comms channels. It all depends on what is most helpful and relevant for you and your business.

Are you ready to take these steps toward making the impact you want to make? Sign up here to begin the journey!