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What do you want to achieve, and who is your impact narrative for?

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You need to know who you are writing for. What do you want to achieve through your impact assessment and your impact story? What change must happen, and for whom?

This page takes you through preparatory steps that you need to complete, either in a light touch way or through a workshop with your colleagues,

Intended Learning outcomes

This page is designed to help you:

  • Think about what you want to achieve through creating and sharing your impact story.

  • Know who you are writing for, and have an idea of how to direct your impact story to them, to have the most impact.

Set out what you want to achieve

We developed a simple template to help answer key questions about what we want to achieve through our impact narrative and assessment. We might already have thought about this at the beginning, but now is a great time to refresh your objectives.

The table brings in some of the tools of other phases of the Impact Playbook, like the Empathy Map (what do you want people to think, feel and do?) and what type of lens do you want to put on your impact, using the Value Lenses or Strategic Perspectives.

Team exercise: set the objectives for your impact narrative

Case study

We use our impact assessment of Europeana 2020 to illustrate this exercise.

What were the objectives and core research questions of your Impact Assessment (linking to the change pathway)?

  • To what extent does Europeana’s annual conference support networking in the sector, and with what results/value? 

  • How does the annual conference support the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector?

What themes in the value lens do you want to highlight (if applicable)?

  • Community

  • Utility

  • Learning

What do you want your impact story to achieve?

  • Wider recognition of the impact of our annual events in which we convene the sector

  • Readers better understand the opportunities and limitations of the online conference format

  • More curiosity and use of evidence-based decision-making

  • Knowing more about our participants’ experiences helps us make better capacity-building resources and activities

What do you want people to feel and care about? 

  • Feel part of a community and Network that cares - that they are not alone

  • Feel inspired by our focus on the environment

  • Feel inspired by our commitment to continually improve

What will success look like? 

  • Evidence-based decision making

  • 100 downloads of the final report we will publish in the first month

  • High engagement with infographics on social media

What do you want readers to do next?

  • Tell us what they thought - give us feedback on how to improve our impacts assessments and events

  • Use what they’ve read - be inspired to think about the impact of their activities and events

  • Be inspired to attend our events

Map the audience for your impact narrative and get to know their needs

It is important to know the audience you are aiming to reach with the report. You’ll probably see that this is different from the main stakeholders in your impact assessment. Now you need to map their needs. This will help shape how you share your impact story with them:

  • What do your audiences want or need? 

  • What will they gain from reading your report?

  • How can your story address their needs?

  • Who is expecting to see the results? How will you get the results to them? 

  • What ‘pain points’ does your audience have that your impact report can address or clarify?

Go back to your notes from the early days of Phase one when you were drafting a list of stakeholders for your project. In Phase one, you created empathy maps for your stakeholders to find out what they experience as pains and how your work can help to relieve them). Who were the stakeholder(s) you reached or wanted to reach? What do they think and feel and how will that influence how you share the findings of your impact assessment?

You’ll go into more detail about the ‘how’ and ‘when’ you’ll share the impact assessment with them later. But it’s important to know from the beginning who you’re writing your narrative and report for, as well as what you want to achieve.

Download or make a copy of the blank template 🔽

Worksheet - mapping your impact narrative audience

Next steps

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