Impact planning and monitoring for EU-funded projects

Organisations we work with

What you get

• A stronger impact section

  A clear pathway from results to outcomes and wider impacts, linked to the expected outcomes of the call and written so evaluators can follow it

• One framework for all partners

  Shared indicators, definitions and responsibilities, so every partner knows what to collect and when

• Reports the funder can use

  Periodic and final reports that combine the required indicators with evidence of what the project changes

• Beyond outputs

  Insight into outcomes for users, organisations and policy, not only into deliverables, events and publications

• Impact that lasts

  Exploitation and sustainability plans with clear owners, so results keep being used after the funding stops

Why we do what we do

Read the film as text

1. We all want to know
2. our place in the world.
3. Thin grey lines join dots into a web.
4. We like to believe that what we do is part of something larger.
5. It is.
6. Together we make our surroundings, our brands, our communities.
7. We shape the work of others, as they shape ours.
8. The web grows dense.
9. We live in one web of cause and consequence.
10. Each path tells a story, part of a larger narrative.
11. A system of meaning.
12. So what is our impact?
13. Whose lives do we touch?
14. What changed? For whom? How much? And what part was ours?
15. Intended or not, for better or worse.
16. Knowing that changes what you do next.
17. A dark line draws a path through the web. Impact management helps you see it, steer it, and use it.
18. A large word: Lead. A purple path runs through the web. Lead with purpose, and fund your mission.
19. A large word: Improve. A green path runs through the web. Learn what doesn’t work and design for better.
20. A large word: Engage. A blue-green path runs through the web. Share your story, and bring others into it.
21. A large word: Account. A blue path runs through the web. State your claim, and prove it.
22. A large word: Discover. A yellow path runs through the web. Find your next impact before it happens.
23. “How do you measure impact?”
24. It sounds hard.
25. It isn’t.
26. It’s not about the how.
27. It’s about
28. Portraits of people fill the screen.
29. A large word: Who.
30. About rights-holders, whose lives are touched.
31. And stakeholders, whose choices shape them.
32. The people stand side by side, at the same height. A wave of colour runs through the web. Every voice, every perspective, equally weighed.
33. The web turns many colours. Pluriform and equivalent.
34. Who determines what.
35. And what determines how.
36. That’s it. No more, no less.
37. We count what can be counted, and listen to the rest.
38. Coloured paths wind across the web. We find the stories that connect the dots, and make sense of the whole.
39. We love our craft:
40. to ask the questions,
41. to measure what matters,
42. and narrate what works.
43. One dark path remains. Let’s reveal your path.
44. The word narrate, with the line: impact in numbers and stories.

What we often hear

• “The call asks for impact pathways and expected outcomes, and our consortium mostly has a work plan.”

  We help you build an impact logic from your work plan to the expected outcomes and impacts of the call, and write a clear impact section

• “Partners in five countries collect data differently. Reporting together is slow and patchy.”

  We help you agree a lean monitoring framework with shared definitions and a simple routine, set up at the start of the project

• “Our periodic reports list deliverables, but say little about what the project changes.”

  We help you add a small set of outcome indicators and short examples from practice, so reports show progress beyond outputs

• “We wrote the dissemination and exploitation plan for the proposal. Nobody has looked at it since.”

  We help you turn it into a working plan, with participants, owners and indicators the consortium reviews regularly

• “When the project ends, the attention for its results ends too.”

  We help you plan from the start what happens after the project: who keeps using the results, and how you can show that later

What you may be wondering

• The deadline is a few weeks away. Can it still be done?

  That depends on your question, and we tell you straight away. We answer a single question about your impact section within three days.

• Partners deliver late or incomplete data. Can you help with that?

  We make it easier for them, with a lean framework and clear definitions. We can’t force them; that stays an agreement within the consortium.

• Do you have experience with European projects?

  Europeana and Oost NL are among our clients. We don’t have a written-up EU project case yet. We work in Dutch and English.

To read

• Grant reporting without weeks of copy and paste

  The final report is due and it feels like starting from scratch. Here is how we write it from what is already there.