This toolbox offers practical information related to societal impact and helps you to apply a structured approach to your impact ambitions, activities and assessment. We draw upon a range of sources, including the Evaluating Societal Impact (ESI) team’s experiences and literature on the topic. You can also find practical, hands-on monitoring and evaluation tools developed by the ESI team.
Impact Toolbox
Need support in finding the perfect tool?
You may be preparing for something new (planning ‘ex ante’), keep track of your contributions (monitoring ‘ex durante’) or want to assess something after it happened (evaluating ‘ex post’) and communicate about it. The right tool will help you to do so.
As a university we have a positive societal impact through our core activities; teaching, research, and engagement, enabled by our operations. Certain tools are more applicable in one context or another.
Making positive societal impact is a collaborative effort. However, planning for and showcasing these efforts can happen on an individual, group/project, department, or organisational level.
Many of the tools and methods introduced here can be applicable across multiple phases, pillars, and structural levels. We encourage you to adapt them to your own needs and environments.
Tools for: What is impact? Discussing the basics
Are you new to impact? Check out the EUR Impact Framework and learn about the core concepts. Here you can find some more tools that help you discuss the basics with others.
Impact Activities Catalogue
Definition and list of 'impact activities' for developing a common language.
Fostering Impactful Careers: A Tool for Reflection
What are the impact competences, activities, and outputs that academics can develop within EUR?
Tools for: Planning for impact
Materials for planning. Applicable when setting up a new project, a grant application, a school-wide strategy, or a monitoring and evaluation plan for any of these.
Thinking About my Impact and Engagement: A Worksheet
Reflect on your contributions, stakeholders, & ways to engage with them through the research cycle.
Theory of Change (ToC): A Method for Impact Planning and Assessment
A process-based method that can help plan for impact & identify strengths & weaknesses of a project.
Journey of Progress card set
A 'Theory of Change'-based card game to find a collaborative vision and explore your contribution.
Stakeholder Mapping Guide
Understanding the impact ecosystem.
Impact Strategy Development Toolkit
How to develop an impact strategy for your unit – an overview of the process.
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: Impact Questions Bank
Questions to develop an interview guide or to conduct conversations about impact.
Impact Strategy Development: Workshops Exploring Impact Ambitions
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.
Tools for: Monitoring and Evaluation: Keeping track of your impact
Tools and guides for impact monitoring and assessment. Applicable when you are evaluating (research) collaborations, or educational activities. Some resources are supported with case studies conducted by researchers from the ESI team.
Impact Indicators: Overview and Selection Menu
Why, when and how to use impact indicators, including a (non-exhaustive) list of impact indicators.
Flows of Knowledge: A Method for Impact Assessment
A method to assess the policy and practice impacts of scientific research.
Evaluating Student Impact Capacity: A Guidebook for Teachers
Questions to ask to evaluate your course and the effect on students’ impact capacity.
Productive Interactions (SIAMPI): A Method for Impact Assessment
A method aimed at highlighting the mechanisms that might bring about societal impact.
Proximity Lens on Structural Collaborations: A Method for Impact Assessment
Identify and highlight conditions that enable successful cooperation.
Preparing case studies for impact within SEP (2021-2027)
A step-by-step guide with useful tips on how to prepare and write case studies.
Tools for: Communicating about your impact
How to showcase your impact to others? These tools can help you with communicating your impact, let that be a public profile on the web, a story you want to share, or preparing narrative case studies for formal evaluation such as the Strategy Evaluation Protocol.
Write your Academic Bio: A Workbook
Showcase the societal relevance and impact of your work in your academic profile.
Impact narrative tool
An interactive tool for developing and sharing your impact narrative.
Building Impact Stories: An Inspirational Guide for Communicators
A tool for communication professionals to support the process of creating an impact story.
