Impact Planning

So you want to make real-world impacts with your research? Whether your motivation is for the REF or to make a difference in itself, planning is integral in the impact journey. For the REF, impact is measured on significance and reach, so start with Significance and start small. When you’ve made a significant difference in one small area, then expand to Reach. There’s no point saying your work reached every country in the world if nobody from those countries cared about it.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you’ve built in a way to measure impact to see whether it’s positive or negative. Ensure impact gathering activities are also built into your ethics application; for example, you may wish to send out some post-activity feedback questionnaires, or conduct post-treatment interviews to capture your impact.

If you’re at a loss of what you could do to measure impact, get some ideas on how to create impact from past case studies in your subject area. When you have some ideas, build them into your plan.

Below are some templates that you can start populating today with your current or planned project. See them as living documents that you can return to regularly and update with developments, successes, or failures in your impact journey. Not everything goes to plan, and having a Plan B will always serve you well.

Work on your plan within your research team, then evaluate your design and plan, or even better, get a critical friend to comment on its feasibility. The more brains that are involved in evaluating your plan, the better. Research impact is truly a collaborative process.

Research Impact Vision Template

Prof. Mark Reed's Stakeholder Analysis Template

3i analysis template

Fast Track Impact planning template

Cambridge Impact Planning Template

Tips to strengthen planned pathways to impact

• Inspire with credible impact goals and tangible benefits
• Specify beneficiaries and what they will get from your work
• Demonstrate demand for your work, you are fulfilling a need
• Map activities onto impact goals
• Establish an impact track record and brag about what you have already done
• Build in impact evaluation – have a plan to check your progress
• Cost it
• Weave impact into your research plan
• Keep it simple
• Seek impact pre-review feedback

Common mistakes

• No clear impact goals
• Benefits are only for academics
• Public engagement without purpose
• Vague plans lacking detail (e.g. I’m going to change the world)

Successful Stakeholder Engagement

1. Represent all relevant stakeholders – ensure you’ve thought about anyone who could be affected by your work and include them from the start.
2. Consider enlisting a professional facilitator (if you have the money) or someone neutral to manage the power dynamics between academics and stakeholders.
3. Empower your stakeholders with accessible information and decision-making powers.

There is not one general public, and not all ‘publics’ will be interested in your work. Find the publics who are interested and set up a stakeholder meeting.