Research impact and policy impact for think tanks and researchers

What you get

• Impact pathways from the start

  Who should use your research, and how it gets to them, built into the research design

• Contribution, not attribution

  Credible accounts of your influence on policy, using methods such as contribution analysis

• Stronger funding applications

  A convincing impact section or pathways to impact in your proposal

• Reaching policy and practice

  Outputs and partnerships that bring findings to where decisions are made

• Tested in practice

  Partnerships with practitioners in which findings are tried out and evaluated

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

• “Our research produces insights, but policymakers don’t turn them into policy.”

  We help you develop outputs and pathways that link analysis to action, so your research becomes usable for decision-makers

• “Funders ask for evidence of policy impact, and influence on policy is hard to show.”

  We set up contribution tracking that documents your research’s influence and is honest about the complexity

• “I want to stay rigorous and readable for professionals. The two seem to clash.”

  We help you create tiered outputs that keep the methodological rigour and are still accessible to practitioners

• “Our research stays in reports and journals. It is rarely tested in practice.”

  We help you set up partnerships with practitioners to test and evaluate findings

What you may be wondering

• Can you actually show influence on policy?

  Not as proof of cause. You can show a plausible contribution, with methods such as contribution analysis and honest limits.

• Will this cost us rigour?

  No. We make layered products: the method stays complete, the summary is accessible.

• Policymakers see our work as lobbying. Does this help?

  Open methods and stated limitations help. Then your work is weighed on its content.

To read

• How impact management shapes democracy

  Measuring can make democracy stronger, and quietly hollow it out. On accountability, having a say, who sets the yardstick and what happens when a figure replaces the debate.

• Seventy years of impact management

  From a question about good intentions to European rules that are now being cut back. The history of impact management, the practices that meet in it, where its standards come from and why setting norms chafes. With a source at every step.