About Impact
The impact of an organisation is the effect it has on others. No organisation acts in a vacuum. Each of its actions has an impact on others, in the same that the actions of many others will have an impact on it. This realisation that businesses need to be aware of their wider operating environment and their inter-related relationships with significant others (key stakeholders) underpins much of what is known as sustainability. In considering your organisations sustainability you need to ensure that the impact you are having on resources and stakeholders are not so dramatic that they cannot recover quickly enough to provide you with what you need into the long-term. In short, if you take too much too quickly from the world around you, you may well destroy the things you depend on.
To help organisations think about their sustainability, three types of impact are often considered: Social, Environmental and Economic – this is sometime referred to as the triple bottom line. Increasing attention to related issues from people, governments and pressure groups is having an impact on all sizes of organisation in all sectors: business, public, and voluntary.
For those in the business world the drive toward sustainability has seen more and more SMEs having to grapple with global issues. Understanding their impact on the environment and the community is becoming something they must get to grips with as a result of pressure from larger client companies driving forward their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda. Corporate Impact management will provide the simple solutions you need to meet these demands while staying focussed on your core business.
For those in the voluntary sector the focus is more on performance management: how can an organisation improve the impact it is trying to have on its beneficiaries? Various performance management tools are now available and many are being used to help these organisations prove their worth to their funders. One of the more well known approaches in this area of work is Social Return on Investment (SROI) which has at its heart a form of impact management.
Social Return on Investment is also a key consideration for Public Sector organisations. As their resources continue to be cut, their growing role as an investor or contract manager will require more sophisticated understanding and systems to ensure those that they fund or pay are maximising their impact and delivering the social results required.
Corporate Impact exists to help organisational leaders and their management team from all these sector use simple systems to manage their way through these new requirements while improving the success of their organisation.
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