The Evaluating Societal Impact project (ESI) was a strategic initiative under Strategy 2024. The project started in 2020 and closed off by the end of 2024. Our ambition was to cocreate tools and templates for thinking about and working towards impact in a more structured way and to provide best practices with and for the EUR community.
This was done by establishing impact governance and strategies, with accompanying monitoring and evaluation approaches, which strengthen the core areas of research, education and engagement. We believe that this approach helped us to contribute to the realisation of the impact potential of EUR.
What did we do?
ESI had two main objectives:
Development of methods, tools and templates to enable impact activities, monitoring and evaluation
Together with our users we designed and implemented a broadly supported set of methods, tools, templates, etc. to work on impact in a more structured way, not only through our research, but also through our education and our engagement (see below for examples).
- Overview of different types of impact activities
- Conceptual frameworks for impact evaluation
- Impact indicators
- Tools for impact planning, tracking, monitoring and evaluation
- Templates for impact reporting
Enable impact governance by developing impact ambitions and strategies
We actively thought along and advised on organising and realising impact evaluation and developing an impact governance structure at several levels within EUR (see below for examples).
- Support and advise on impact ambition formation
- Templates and building blocks for impact strategy formation
- Facilitate knowledge sharing and learning
- Provide advice and peer review
- Draft EUR (Annual) Impact Report
In addition to our two main objectives, we actively contributed to creating an impact environment at EUR that facilitates the creation of (positive) societal impact. We did this by sharing knowledge about impact evaluation, giving workshops during events, connecting and collaborating with important other stakeholders within and outside the organisation (local, national and international level) and by broadly providing advice and peer review to different people at different levels within the organisation.
How can we help you?
Although we are not a strategic initiative anymore, several of us still work on the topic of impact and engagement within the organisation. In addition, we leave behind all the tools we developed and most of them are designed as stand-alone tools. So, depending on your question and the level you are operating at in the organisation (e.g., individual, (research)team, department, School), we can assist you with:
Are you unsure if we can help you with what you need? Are you unsure if we have what you are looking for regarding impact? Please feel free to reach out to us! Even though the team is not operating in its original form anymore, we definitely will try to support you or direct you to other experts we know!