Results matter
Let me be clear first. Civil society organizations must achieve results.
A peace organization must try to stop arms shipments. A nature organization must ensure that there is more nature. An environmental organization must reduce pollution. A care organization must provide good care to as many people as possible. An organization that shelters victims of human trafficking must give people safety, protection, and a future.
Intentions are not enough.
A mission without results eventually becomes a nice sentence on a wall. And that is of no use to anyone, except perhaps the printer.
So yes, civil society organizations must think carefully about what their work delivers. They must make choices, adjust course, stop doing things that achieve little, and focus more strongly on what works. Anyone who wants to change the world must take results seriously.
But the word impact is becoming less and less helpful in that regard.
Impact has become the language of control
Governments and funders are increasingly using impact as a kind of KPI. A performance indicator with a warm sauce poured over it.
Write a policy plan. Fill in a grant application. Show what your impact will be in five years. Prove your relevance. Preferably measurable. Preferably neat. Preferably in a table that does not cause political debate.
That sounds reasonable. Until you look at how social change really happens.
Real social change takes time. Often more than five years. Sometimes fifteen or twenty years. Sometimes a generation. A social problem rarely disappears because one organization has worked well during one policy period. Change grows through pressure, research, service provision, conflict, alliances, stories, policy, money and power.
That fits poorly into a grant logic.
In many strategies, we therefore distinguish between different levels. There is long-term social change. Beneath that are effects that you need to bring closer. Beneath that are results of your work in a policy period.
Those results count. They show whether you are moving.
They are just rarely the change itself.
The system does not fit into five years
Take human trafficking.
An organization that shelters victims can perfectly report how many people it supported. How many cases it took on. How many nights of shelter it provided. How many legal processes it supported.
That is important work. For the people themselves, it can mean everything.
But anyone who truly wants societal change also asks other questions. Why do people still fall prey to exploitation so easily? How does the justice system work? Which legislation does too little to protect victims? Which economic actors benefit from vulnerability? Where does the government look away? How many resources do inspection services, the police and the justice system receive to stop perpetrators?
That is where change begins.
Not in the reporting on what you did. But in the shift you are trying to bring about in society.
That work is slower. More political. Harder to measure. You are less likely to quickly get a green check mark for it.
Precisely for that reason, it must remain visible.
Impact has no direction
There is another problem. Impact sounds positive, but the word has no moral direction.
Those who cause harm also have impact.
A company that pollutes, damages ecosystems, or puts labor rights under pressure has social impact. A lot of it, even. It’s just that this impact is negative.
That is why the word is so convenient. A polluting company buys a small piece of nature, increases biodiversity there, puts up a sign, and says: look, we are making an impact.
Maybe that is even true. Something good is happening on that one piece of land.
Only the net movement can still be negative. Those who cause damage on a large scale and show restoration on a small scale do not change the balance. They mainly change the story.
That is the fog that impact creates.
You can see this clearly with biodiversity. If the major causes of biodiversity loss lie in pollution, pesticides, certain economic sectors, land use, and depletion, then a small positive project is not enough. Then you have to look at the balance. At power. At causes. At who benefits from the damage and who pays for restoration.
Impact too often allows everyone to place themselves on the right side of the story.
Change does that less easily.
“Impact too often allows everyone to cast themselves as being on the right side of the story.”
Change requires better questions
That is why I want us to replace the word impact with change more often.
Not because change is perfect. No word is safe from misuse. Give consultants three months and change, too, will be on a canvas with seven arrows and an abstract icon alongside it.
Still, change forces us to ask better questions today.
- What needs to change in society?
- Who has power over that?
- What causes keep the problem in place?
- Which results bring us closer?
- Which results mainly distract us?
- Who causes harm and who repairs it?
- What is the net movement?
Those are harder questions than: what is your impact?
And that is exactly the point.
Civil society, don’t let your mission be diminished
Civil society organizations should not hide from results. On the contrary. Those who want social change must be ambitious. You need to know what you are trying to achieve. You need to be able to explain why your work matters. You need to learn from what succeeds and what fails.
But don’t let your reason for existing be narrowed down to a five-year urge to prove yourself.
Some change begins as service provision. Some change begins as outrage. Some change begins in a case file, at a kitchen table, in a courtroom, on the street, or in a meeting where someone finally says: this isn’t right.
And then the long work begins.
Power does not shift by itself. Policy does not change because you fill in an indicator. Economic interests do not politely step aside because your mission is clearly formulated.
That is why we need language that makes that struggle bigger.
Impact too often asks for proof.
Change asks for direction.
So yes, delete impact where it creates fog. Use result when you mean result. Use output when you mean output. Use effect when you mean effect. And when you mean social change, say change.
Because the question is not whether we can demonstrate that we are busy.
The question is what needs to change, who needs to move for that to happen, and how much power we dare to build to make it a reality.
