The document discusses impact and outcomes, defining them as the changes, benefits, or effects that result from an organization's services. It provides things organizations can do to focus on impact, such as thinking about impact when defining strategies, delivering impact through work, assessing impact by measuring goals, and improving impact through learning. The document also provides definitions for important terms like outputs, experiences, beneficiaries, and users, and describes three levels--red, amber, and green--that an organization can be at in terms of understanding and evidencing their impact.

1. Impact
The difference we make in the world
Impact / outcomes = the changes, benefits or
other effects that happen to those you’re
working on behalf of or who use your services.

2. Things to do with Impact
• Think impact – always keep it in mind
• Plan to create it – when defining your strategy
• Deliver impact – in your work
• Assess impact – measure how well are you
meeting your planned impact
• Improve it – learn how to create more impact
• Communicate it – internally and externally

3. Where is your organisation now on impact?
Red:- your organisation is not even talking about impact or outcomes,
let alone evidencing, communicating and learning from them.
Amber:- you have talked about your impact/outcomes and you
capture your outputs but have struggled to capture information
about your impact. Your plans are not always focused on intended
impact and you’re not always good at communicating the difference
you make.
Green:- Your organisation knows a fair bit about impact and has
found ways of capturing some evidence of outcomes but want to
see if there are ways of improving what you do and learning from
others and the VIP materials.

4. Important Definitions
• Outputs – the services you deliver
• Experiences – how users feel when using your services
• Outcomes/Impact – the changes, benefits or other effects that
happen to your beneficiaries or users as a result of your services
• Beneficiaries – the people that you ultimately exist to benefit
• Users/audiences – the people you work on or with in order to
help your beneficiaries (e.g. external agencies)