How do you make social impact visible? That’s not always easy to explain. The Municipality of Delft, Erasmus MC, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Nederlands Centrum Jeugdgezondheid and Healthy Start have therefore developed an Impact Narrative Tool. With this online tool, we help you to put together your ‘impact narrative’ and thus show the impact of, for example, your research project or policy intervention.

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. 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. Finally, an impact narrative helps to account for the efforts and results of projects in a transparent way.

How does it work?

The tool guides you through six modules in developing and sharing an impact narrative. 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.

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.