Impact. Everybody wants it. But how do you know if your organisation is having impact? And are you explaining how you had an impact well?

This is particularly important when you want to get support from funders, board members, partners, volunteers and even staff.

We’ve worked with hundreds of organisations over the years and have found there is often a disconnect between what is being measured and what is being told as an impact story. Sometimes people don’t know what is actually useful to measure. Other times people aren’t great at finding the juicy bits about their work that funders will value. Or maybe organisations are struggling to systematically capture impact.

That’s where an impact audit comes in.

What is an impact audit?

In a nutshell, an impact audit is a focused, strategic review of how you are measuring your organisation’s impact, and how you are telling the world about it.

It meets your organisation where you are, whether you have a well-developed Theory of Change and KPIs, or not. It looks at how you talk about your work on your website, your social media and in reports. And it gives you recommendations and tools to improve your impact measurement and storytelling in a tangible way.

Why do organisations get impact audits?

• Strategic alignment: To review whether their impact measurement and/or impact storytelling aligns with, and furthers, their strategy
• Better evidence for support: To improve their evidence gathering and sharing for funding bids or stakeholder engagement 
• Streamlining internal processes in line with capacity: To have a realistic understanding and recommendations of where they can improve their measurement and storytelling in line with their organisational capacity, in order to improve their impact. 

An impact audit in action

Huddlecraft is a peer-to-peer EdTech platform encouraging lifelong learning. As the organisation worked to revamp its strategy and deepen its impact, we conducted an audit of their existing approach to impact measurement and storytelling. As their Creative Lead Josie NG explains:

“Stephen is a brilliant listener and strategist. From one 45 minute conversation, he extracted tailored, practical recommendations that showed how perceptive and experienced he is. 

He helped us wade through all the impact resources and guidance out there, and zone in on what our next step is. Alongside the many new insights gained, the clarity and focus to move forward as a team was invaluable. 

Within a week of our final checkpoint meeting, as Stephen recommended, our team got together to start working through our Theory of Change with his guidance in mind, and we’re bringing his advice into writing funding proposals”. 

Book a free 45mins call with us to discuss whether an impact audit would work for your organisation.