How do you make the social impact of, for example, a research project or policy intervention visible? That’s not always easy to explain. An ‘impact narrative’ is a storytelling technique that allows you to convey the sustainable, positive change resulting from a project to your target groups. The Impact Narrative Tool is an online tool to create such a narrative, developed for policymakers, healthcare professionals, researchers and communication professionals, among others.

The power of an impact narrative

Impact narratives inspire movements in which people and organizations are actively involved in creating sustainable, positive change. It also helps to reflect on the experiences with this, and to share them with others. In short, it is an effective storytelling technique to convey to others in presentations, conversations, reports, and evaluations the importance of your efforts to the wider society. In addition, an impact narrative helps to account for the efforts and results of projects in a transparent way.

Impact Narrative Tool

The Municipality of Delft, Erasmus MC, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Nederlands Centrum Jeugdgezondheid and Healthy Start developed the Impact Narrative Tool, an online tool that helps to develop and share an impact narrative, using a design approach.

By helping to create impact narratives, these organizations aim to stimulate societal change and collectively learn from the experiences that lead to these changes. The tool has been developed primarily for use by policymakers, healthcare professionals, researchers and communication professionals, but is open to all and available through www.impactnarrative.nl.

How does it work?

The Impact Narrative Tool guides you through six modules in developing and sharing an impact narrative. The impact narrative consists of five elements, from problem to solution. The tool covers these elements and how they can be presented.

We provide explanations and tips in videos and written text and provide you with an interview protocol and template to collect and store the information for your story. There is also a quiz to test your knowledge about impact narratives. You don’t have to go through all the modules or do it in a fixed order. You can choose the modules that are of interest to you. The quiz offers help in (re)choosing the modules to follow.

Conclusion and follow-up

The Impact Narrative Tool provides a structured framework that guides users through the process of creating and sharing impact narratives. Does the tool work well for you? Then we definitely call on you to share the tool with others. In this way, we can inspire others to also share their impact narratives and give a platform to the people and communities that benefit from our efforts. We strive to continuously improve the tool according to need and use.