Impact communications: A systems approach

More and more organizations are recognizing the benefits of communicating their impact. And they are multiple. Impact communications:

• Helps raise new funds for your organization or gain new customers for your social enterprise
• Helps new partners emerge to grow your organization with
• Helps replication of your efforts (I.e., if you are a regional fund in SE Asia, you can make it easier for a similar fund in LATAM to start)

However, as more organizations are mission-driven and ESG becomes a more integral part of the brand for companies, the competition for an audience’s attention gets harder.

Taking a systems approach to impact communications will help you stand out.

A systems approach? What are we talking about?

A systems approach starts with the understanding that your target audience is already being influenced by multiple people and organizations This is the “system” of influence they live in.

Versus adding another voice to this system of influence, impact communicators can leverage the existing system around their target audience to create change.

How do you take a systems approach to impact communications?

1. Map Your Audience

Start with your target audience and identify how they are currently being influenced. What news media, coworkers, family, friends, career connections, businesses, nonprofits, schools, government, or religious connections are they listening to (their “influencers”)? List out specific organizations and individuals. What are their social media handles? How many followers to they have? How much engagement do they get? Do they repost content from other organizations?

Mapping the audience is a critical first step. At Discovered Markets, we have the benefit of having done this for multiple users, so we maintain a database of influencers across the globe along various areas of impact (gender, health, decent work, nutritious food systems, climate, etc). Our database is the starting point for our users answering, “How do I influence my target audience?”

1. Prepare your insights and data so others can act on them

With this now much larger list of influencers, your ability to produce customized content becomes very difficult. Instead of you creating it, think about how you can empower these
“influencers” with your insights and data. Is this a real-time dashboard? A database that everyone can access?

When we worked with the FMO Ventures fund on mapping the Morocco Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, we didn’t just build a mapping for FMO. We created a database and visuals that fellow ecosystem actors could embed on their digital channels. We then conducted outreach to local media platforms to promote the mapping.

1. Create content not just with your audience in mind, but with these influencers

When creating content, think about what these influencers need. Often co-creating content creates buy-in with these channels and ensures more exposure for your message in the creation phase.

And you have a lot of content. Content has a longer shelf life than you think. Many impact communicators spend a lot of time looking for new stories within their organization. Often what we consider “old” is actually evergreen content that can be reused and repurposed.

When we worked with Frontier Brokers Network, we only had access to the previous content they had developed over the past three years. We quickly did an audit of that content and discovered that while yes, some content was specific to a moment (i.e. COVID-response), most referred to the systemic problem of investors not considering the value of gender equity on their returns. This problem had not gone away and much of the content was relevant as the organization looked to expand their influence to new audiences (through new influencers).

1. Be proactive - it is not “build it, and they will come”.

Building data and insights systems that make your impact known can empower you and your audience. But it does nothing if they never see it. You need to reach out to these influencers!

This is a critical step of our main Amplify product. We do this outreach on behalf of most of our users. In our partnership with Gatsby Africa, they wanted to grow their influence within the development donor and financial institution crowd. Building new relationships takes time. Over six months, we reached out to over 180 organizations and secured 16 new relationships for them with a potential exporsure of over 600,000 people in 16 countries.