The document outlines various tools and methods used by IRISS to assess and enhance their impact, including building contribution stories with staff and detailed stakeholder analysis. It emphasizes the importance of both broad and specific theories of change, gathering data from different projects, and co-designed evaluations involving practitioners and stakeholders. The document also highlights the value of key influencer interviews to gather insights and assess organizational impact within the social services sector.

1. +
Contribution and Impact Tools
The following slides outline some tools and ideas we have used in Iriss
to help us with looking at our impact and thinking through our
contribution.

2. START TO BUILD A CONTRIBUTION STORY WITH STAFF
(POST-ITS)
Inputs Activities Engagement Reaction Risks/Enable
rs
Outcomes
Put these headings up along a wall (or print this table out on a large sheet of paper). Get staff to use post-its under each heading. Each column
will need a short explanation. It is worthwhile getting people to do this individually on post-its and then to come together as a group to discuss
and stick these up on the wall and begin to cluster them.
This will give a lot of specifics and detail but this can then be used break down what is going on underneath (e.g start to break up
short/medium/long term outcomes, identify different types of input or activity). This can be done for a project, team or as a whole

3. START TO BUILD A CONTRIBUTION STORY WITH STAFF
(POST-ITS)
Activities Reach and
quality of
engagement
Changes in
awareness
Changes in
capacity,
knowledge
or skills
Changes in
practice or
behaviour
Long-term
outcomes
You could use different headings that give you a different focus. We used the above headings in the Iriss organisation-wide Theory of Change.
These were less about the details and specifics but more about the way in which we work and the influence we felt we had. For example:
Activities – Broad activity (‘we translate and disseminate, we build resources, we act as a hub’)
Reach – Who we work with broadly (‘we work with the social services in Scotland, we work to empower people’)
Awareness – ‘People we work with feel enabled and empowered’
Capacity, knowledge, skills – ‘People increase their own ability to learn/innovate/generate evidence’
Practice/behaviour – ‘People use evidence, people share learning...’, social service organisations adapt and change’
Long-term outcomes – Policy, outcomes and practice level outcomes with the end point of culture change around these
Often it is useful to use a more specific Theory of Change (like in the previous slide) to then inform a more broad ToC like this one.

4. BUILD A CONTRIBUTION STORY WITH STAFF (VISUAL)
One way to start a full organisational theory of change is to split the staff team into groups and get them to build up the organisational
picture (each take different sections then come together to review and collate). The above photo is just one way of doing this:
Blue streams – resources (inputs) /activities/ reach /engagement /reaction /changes /outcomes
Yellow – context – what we know/ our assumptions of our work
Green – wider context/ unknowns that are happening around us (competition/policy environment)
Orange and red - risks and enablers (what may hinder or help us)
This will then need collated, summarised and sense checked for evidence.

5. ACTIVITY REVIEW (NUMBERS REVIEW?)
• People worked with
(overall)
• Events ran
• Partner events
• Sector events
• Social media
• Organisations worked
with
• Geographical/sector
spread
• Web page views
• Mailing list number
These numbers stand on their own in
the Iriss Activity Review but they are
backed up by our Contribution
Analysis work. In the review we
included a whole range of our
projects based on our organisational
themes, achievements and lessons
learned.
https://www.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/iriss-activityreview-2016.pdf

6. DEVELOP CASE STUDIES
• Instead of just looking at an organisational level, carry out logic models for discrete
projects/programmes of work
• These can be used to build an organisation theory of change (if done a number of
times and collated) or it might reveal more detail not captured when Contribution
Analysis is used at a organisational level
• This is often useful to put a boundary around the work and it can make it easier to
involve those who have been involved (including service users)
• These can produce powerful stories that can become exemplars of the ways your
organisation exerts impact
• Iriss included a number of these within the CA report

7. VISION AND VALUES
• With CA, you don’t need to start with the activities and inputs, you can start with
the really high level outcomes you want to reach
• It could be useful to set time with your staff/board/stakeholders to really drill
down into what this is for the organisation
• This often opens up conversation around reasons for existence, USPs, skillsets of
staff, identifying gaps and also understanding around what motivates people
• Identifying this high level helps to then go on and think about how the different
elements of your organisation feed into this and how you can evidence the
contribution
• In Iriss we had a staff/board day around our values and
produced a shared document (and subsequent
statement around that).

8. STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
At Iriss, we used Coggle (https://coggle.it/) to do a map of our stakeholders and it looked like this:
We used this stakeholder analysis to help us understand where we had strong links, and
where we were lacking. This helped us revisit sectors where we had weak or no
connections and to identify where we needed to either pursue new relationships to help
us with our impact, or indeed if some of our previous connections were out-of-date and
needed reinvigorating.

9. CO-DESIGNED AND DELIVERED
EVALUATION
• Iriss used this in our Hospital to Home project
• We worked with health and social care practitioners who had been
involved in the project to both design the methods and questions to help
us capture the impact the work had with older people who had been
through the new hospital to home pathways created by the project
• These practitioners also carried out the interviews and focus groups with
the older people
• Advantages – robust, critical, closer to practice and reality, more
meaningful engagement and questions
• Disadvantages – lot of time to set-up, harder to quality control the
delivery.

10. KEY INFLUENCER INTERVIEWS
Ask key influencers/stakeholders related to your organisation to gain their
perception and insights to help build data and insight into your organisational
impact.
For example, Iriss conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews Chief
Social Work Officers about the perceptions of Iriss and the work that is done
and the value of Iriss to the social services sector.
We asked questions like:
•What are the current challenges in the sector?
•Where do you think Iriss has a role to play in the social services sector?
•What Iriss resources have you used around:
– Evidence use?
– Innovation and improvement?
– Knowledge media?
•Has Iriss supported you (and your organisation in the work you do)?