Showing the value of your network or ecosystem

Organisations we work with

We met some of them through Impact Hub Amsterdam’s Regeneration Program.

What you get

• Contribution, not attribution

  Connections made, collaborations started and knowledge shared: we make visible what happens because your network exists, without claiming other people’s results.

• Experience in ecosystems

  From the Impact Hub network to the impact framework for Oost NL’s Smart Energy Hubs: we know how value is created between organisations.

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

• “What our network makes possible is hard to attribute to us.”

  We help you track contribution rather than attribution: connections made, collaborations sparked and knowledge shared, the outcomes your network makes possible.

• “Members don’t see what taking part gets them.”

  We help you make value visible to members: who they connected with, what they learned and how they benefited, alongside the collective impact.

• “Funders want direct results from every meeting.”

  We help you present your network as infrastructure rather than a project, showing how you enable others’ impact: partnerships formed, initiatives started, policy influenced.

• “All our members and partners measure in their own way.”

  We help you agree a light shared framework that respects each organisation’s context, so you can tell one story about the ecosystem.

What you may be wondering

• Can you really measure a network’s impact?

  Yes, as contribution rather than attribution. We track the connections made, the partnerships that formed and the initiatives that came out of them.

• Do all our members have to measure the same way?

  No. We agree on a small shared set. The rest stays with the members, in their own form.

• Won’t this take up too much of our members’ time?

  We start with what is already there: sign-ups, notes and a few short questions after an event. Only then do we look at what is missing.

To read

• In praise of pidgin

  In monitoring and evaluation, partners often want to agree on their words first. Guest writer Ad Korf shows that a shared language grows out of collaboration, and why a makeshift pidgin is a sign of progress.

• The space in between

  Between what ends and what has yet to begin lies a space without a fixed shape. What that space in between is, why organisations rush to fill it, and what you can learn there.

• The go-betweens

  Between a neighbourhood and the town hall there is often one person who knows both sides. This story is about the people who connect two worlds, what it costs them and how to make their work visible.