Actionable impact management - eBook series

This series, published by SoPact, the Melbourne Business School & Asia Pacific Social Impact Centre, covers four topics: Theory of Change and Groundwork, Social Impact Metrics, Data Strategy, Reports and Storytelling.

This resource and the following information was contributed by Hetal Sheth.

Authors and their affiliation

Unmesh Sheth, Lorena Rodriguez, Hetal Sheth, Rachel Dodd (SoPact)

Jodi York, Krzysztof Dembek (Melbourne Business School)

Key features

Actionable Impact Management (AIM) is an open source framework for defining an internal organisational method for establishing an enduring data oriented/outcome-oriented impact management process. AIM's objective is to outline a roadmap for your organisation to follow in the hopes to reach a point where you are able to more accurately and effectively communicate your organisation's impact to multiple stakeholders.

By Impact Management, we refer to an organisation's ability to define an impact framework that is practical and enduring and translate insights into effective communication on impact via your website, reports, and other channels.

The Actionable Impact Management (AIM) series includes four freely available PDF guides:

• Volume One: Groundwork walks through the introspective work necessary for defining an impact framework.
• Volume Two: Metrics covers the metrics selection process for your impact program assessment and impact measurement.
• Volume Three: Data introduces organisations to how technology might be leveraged to collect reliable and credible data on the outcome-oriented metrics selected.
• Volume Four: Communication connects back to the first volume to tie the final bow on Actionable Impact Management. In this final volume, we explore methods for communicating your organisation's impact story with correct metrics, transparent data, and minimal tools

The SoPact website also houses the Impact Perspective blog - a collection of articles on major trends in social impact management, topics in social impact framework, social impact reporting and data management for mission-driven organisations.

How have you used or intend on using this resource?

These guides outline four steps to start the impact measurement and management journey as an organisation. Non-profits, foundations, social enterprises, social businesses, mission-driven organisations, impact investors, or impact funds all need to have an impact map to start impact management. Our guides have been widely used by organisations mentioned above and practitioners working with the same type of organisations. 

Why would you recommend it to other people?

The guides are written to be highly actionable, using a clear step-by-step process and to avoid methodological jargon. The guide complements the Sopact platform, Impact Cloud, which is built on these principles to support users in applying this framework in practice.