Impact strategies allow us to be more conscious and deliberate about the impact we anticipate, create and facilitate through our education, research, engagement and operations. Use these resources to develop an impact strategy for your unit.
What are Impact Strategies?
Universities have a crucial public role and responsibility to address and positively contribute to the vast challenges that society faces. An impact strategy defines a shared ambition for positive societal change, along with the goals and support mechanisms that are needed at the institutional level to maximise those contributions – defining the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ of achieving those ambitions.
Impact ambitions and strategies can be defined upon multiple levels – individual, team/group, department, school, and university; and have to do with our core activities – education, research, and engagement, and how we organise ourselves (operations). Within the EUR context, impact is always a multi-layered phenomenon.
Tools for impact strategy development
The Impact Strategy Development Toolkit explains the journey of impact strategy development and provides relevant information and resources for developing school-level (faculty) impact strategies, which may also be adapted to other contexts. This toolkit supports a shift from individual efforts and activities towards a shared responsibility for achieving impact, ensuring that everyone has the necessary structures and support for impact.
The process of developing an impact strategy is described as a journey consisting of three main phases:
- Plan & Prepare;
- Discover;
- Develop.
The toolkit also contains information on how to Communicate and Deploy, and Evaluate the developed impact strategy.
The Toolkit: Plan & prepare your journey
Impact Strategy Development Toolkit
How to develop an impact strategy for your unit – an overview of the process.
Tools for the Discovery phase
Impact Strategy Development: Discovering your Current Organisational Landscape
A guide to understand existing impact practices, policies, structures, and activities of your unit.
Impact Strategy Development: Questions Bank and Interview Guide
Questions to develop an interview guide or to conduct conversations about impact.
Tools for the Develop phase
Impact Strategy Development: Workshops to Co-create your Strategy
Set up interactive workshops to support your unit's strategic planning.
Impact Strategy Development: Organisational Goals
A non-exhaustive collection of organisational goals and behaviours to consider for your unit.
Contact
These tools have benefitted from the collaborations between the strategic project Evaluating Societal Impact (ESI) and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Erasmus School of Health Policy Management (ESHPM), and Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC), including a wider community of experts on impact strategies and impact evaluation across Erasmus University Rotterdam and beyond.
Share your experiences, suggestions, questions and feedback via e-mail: evaluatingsocietalimpact@eur.nl.