Step 1. Get to know your 'stakeholders'
Intended Learning outcomes
This page is designed to help you:
Understand who your stakeholders are
Think more about who benefits from your work
Understand why you need to know more about and prioritise your stakeholders for an impact assessment
Stakeholders - tell me more!
Stakeholders - a definition
A person, group, community, or organisation expected to experience a change, that is, to benefit in some way from a certain activity. In the impact design phase, activities and impact assessments are designed around stakeholders.
One of the key attributes of the Impact Playbook, we hope, is that it makes us focus on the stakeholders for whom we are creating impact. This could be anyone from your funder (you might want to show them more evidence that you are doing a good job) or your online or in-person visitors. However, it may be impossible - or least very time-consuming - to start to measure the impact you make for everyone that you might call a beneficiary of your activities. Therefore, you have to prioritise them.
What is the Empathy Map?
Sometimes, we can be far removed from our stakeholders in our everyday jobs. The Impact Playbook sets out ways to get to know your stakeholders better through the workshop canvas, the Empathy Map.
The Empathy Map
The Empathy Map is a collaborative tool that you can use to gain a deeper insight into your stakeholders. Much like a user persona, an Empathy Map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment.
The Empathy Map is a tool you can use in a workshop setting or by yourself to help you empathize and get to know your stakeholder. The canvas is divided into several sections. Use post it notes (digital or real), or print out a copy and write on the canvas, to start brainstorming with your colleagues.
Download the Empathy Map canvas!
When you can use the Empathy Map
You can use the Empathy Map in project planning - it’s particularly effective for this. However, consider validating your assumptions about your stakeholders with further research, particularly if you will be investing time and money into developing services for them. In fact, the Empathy Map might be a good step towards developing services with your stakeholders - it might highlight the need for their participation at an early stage.
The Empathy Map helps in impact assessment design. You can use it to remind yourself of the experience of the stakeholder. The changes that the stakeholders have experienced can in turn be written down as outcomes.