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Any discussion of impact means thinking about who you are having (or would like to have) impact for. However, you can’t create, or try to create, impact for everyone. You will need to prioritise.

The best way to do this is as a team, with a variety of people who are likely to understand your stakeholders from different perspectives. Adding this diversity to the group will strengthen your outcomes.

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About the exercise

(blue star) Who is involved? Team work

⏳ Time: 1.5 hours

📄 Resources needed: print outs (A3 or bigger recommended) of the empathy map canvas; paper to brainstorm on or a prepared digital canvas for online workshops; pens, post-it notes

✅ Learning goals:

  • XX

  • XX

  • XX

🛄 Outputs

  • Better understanding of who your work impacts directly and indirectly

  • Inspired to be more focused on create impact for specific stakeholders

Results: full and prioritised list of stakeholders; empathy maps for your prioritised stakeholders

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Step 1: introduction and setting the scene (0 - 15 minutes)

  • Welcome everyone

  • Short ice-breaker or round of introductions if not everyone knows each other

  • Introduce the objectives of the meeting and anticipated results

  • Share an overview of the meeting structure and schedule

  • Introduce the exercise and organise everyone into small breakout groups

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Step 12: stakeholder mapping (breakout groups) (15 - 35 minutes)

Instructions

1. Brainstorm. Write down (in a list, on post-its, or on your digital whiteboard) who you think the direct beneficiaries of your work are. Then you might think about who the indirect beneficiaries of your work are. You can discuss as you go, or brainstorm first then cluster and discuss the suggestions later.

For example, it might look like this - this is a list for a hypothetical local heritage digitisation project with schools.

Direct stakeholders (beneficiaries)

  • School teachers

  • Pupils

Indirect stakeholders (beneficiaries)

  • Parents, guardians, family of pupils involved

  • Funders

  • Local community

2. Group discussion. You might notice that you have a very long list, and that there are differences over who you think directly or indirectly benefits from your activities or for whom you are doing the activity for. Make sure that you allow enough time for discussion.

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Step 23: prioritise your stakeholders (35 minutes - 55 minutes)

Stay in the same breakout groups for a discussion and exercise about how to prioritise your stakeholders.

Spending time in a discussion can really help to clarify - for everyone involved - who you really want to create change for. Knowing this will make a better project and a better impact assessment. You now need to prioritise your stakeholders to help you agree your focus. If you have many suggestions, start to cluster (bring together suggested stakeholders) who are similar. You could also:

  • Make a matrix where one axis is important-unimportant and the other is direct-indirect

  • Let your colleagues vote for the most important stakeholder (e.g. with two or three votes each)

You should end up with one or a shortlist of prioritised stakeholders. Now it’s time to test what you know about them.

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Step 3: empathy mapping

Divide your group into smaller groups and assign each one one of the prioritised stakeholders from your list. Use the empathy map to think about, organise and record what you think you know about stakeholders.

Take some time for this and feed back to the plenary group. If you have all taken different stakeholders, you can now discuss if everyone has the same perspective.

Ask each group:

  • Do we know enough about this stakeholder?

  • How might we find out more about this stakeholder?

  • Could we involve them in impact design (either for a project or impact assessment)?

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Tip: Make sure the groups do not get too specific and spend too much time imagining what the stakeholder likes and doesn't like. Your primary job is to find out what this stakeholder experiences as pains and how your work can help relieve that pain (gains).4: whole group discussion - who have you prioritised and why? (55 minutes - 1 hr 15 minutes)

The workshop facilitator should now ask each breakout group to name the top three stakeholders that have been prioritised. You can write this up on a clean (digital) whiteboard or with post-it notes.

Ask each group questions like:

  • Who have you prioritised and why?

  • Were there any groups that you considered important but didn’t prioritise?

  • Is it easy or hard to know what the prioritised stakeholders think?

  • Do we already understand these stakeholders well?

Try to find the top three stakeholders that all groups agree with. If there are disagreements, perhaps this is telling you that people have very different expectations of the project or activity. Use this time to work this out, it’s not helpful to skip past it for the sake of it.

You should end with a list of prioritised stakeholders.

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Step 5: wrap up and next steps (1 hr 15 minutes - 1 hr 30 minutes)

It’s now time to thank your participants for their contributions and summarise what you have achieved in your workshop. You should set out the next steps. You might send an email summary after the meeting setting out the prioritised list of stakeholders, or a meeting invitation to and overview of the next workshop. Set clear expectations of your colleagues, including how they can get more involved if they want to.

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Next steps