Impact & program evaluation

Who is it for?

Program or project leaders who want to understand the impact of their work
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning practitioners within organisations
Research and development teams seeking to understand the impact of innovation projects

What’s included?

Stocktaking from a regenerative and systemic perspective
Developing an evaluation framework (Theory of Change) for your project or program that captures the nuances of your work
Creating and implementing data collection methods
Support with analysis and report writing

Duration

Your project or program length plus initial preparation and time for final evaluation

Expected Outcome

We can only imagine how much time and energy you invested into setting up your project or program. Rather than seeing impact evaluation as an obligation, we approach it as an opportunity for you to:

Take a step back and reflect on what matters most, to bring your purpose to life in your project or program.
Foster empathy and participation among all stakeholders involved.
Reveal synergies between actors.
Deepen your understanding of what works and what doesn’t, and have backed-up evidence for decision-making and further improvement of your work.
Be able to communicate both the learnings and the positive impact to others.

Wait, what? Impact evaluation to bring your purpose to life and foster empathy and participation? Yes, that’s what we know is possible when grounding any form of measurement into a regenerative paradigm.

Working on the Soil: Foundational Topics

Thriving & Growing: Deep-Dive Topics

Effective team communication and meeting culture

Meetings take up a lot of our time and can drain our energy instead of contributing to meaningful collaboration. Together with you, we analyse your current meeting structure and culture to harness the potential of asynchronous and synchronous work.

Giving & receiving feedback

An organism without sensory input is blind to change and adaptation. Constructive and precise feedback is an essential part of team communication. Considering the statement “clear is kind”, we reflect on a variety of feedback situations and processes.

Empowering team decision-making

Clarity on the process of decision-making can boost team collaboration. Collectively we begin to unlearn old patterns of decision-making and create space to set up and practise appropriate new tools and processes.

Purpose & values in teams

Gain clarity about your team’s purpose & values and how they can support your daily and strategic work.

Trust & team psychological safety

Explore conditions & practices to increase the magic ingredient for effective teamwork: trust.

Giving & receiving feedback

Learn communication practices and approaches for more mindful and effective feedback conversations.

Empowering team decision-making

Learn tools & methods to make decision-making more inclusive, efficient & empowering.

Setting boundaries & saying no

Practise setting and respecting boundaries in leadership and teamwork, and learn tools to communicate them.

Leading with purpose & values

Develop clarity about your purpose & values and how they can guide you as a leader.

Building resilience & handling stress

Develop supportive practices for you and your team to deal with stress and navigate challenges.

Leadership in a changing and complex world

Equip yourself for wayfinding in a VUCA world (volatile - uncertain - complex - ambiguous).

Peer learning in organisations & networks

Tap into the wealth of knowledge, lived experiences and diverse perspectives that are present within every group.

The Impact Garden

Discover a regenerative approach to Theories of Change to create new insights and foster a deeper understanding of your project and work.

Rethinking impact measurement

Learn about measurement as an opportunity to foster participation, reveal hidden potential, and to serve people and the planet.

Collaborative Innovation

Explore how corporations, governments, and civil society can co-create ecosystems that foster life-centered innovation.

Find the right kind of support

Get in touch to explore impact evaluation for your organisation or network.

Our Approach

We have often observed that the linear, non-participatory way we go about measuring impact gets in the way of creating meaningful change. Impact evaluation then becomes a reporting burden, often not measuring what truly matters.

We design holistic frameworks which help you use measurement and evaluation as opportunities to bring your purpose to life, reveal hidden synergies, and actively engage with the people and stakeholders around you.

To understand what matters, our holistic approach includes relational aspects (e.g. trust), the inner capacities of individuals, teams and organisations (e.g. resilience), and the complex and dynamic environments we work in.

More specifically, we can support you with:

Developing or adjusting indicators and impact logics with a strong(er) and more consistent focus on the inner dimensions, circularity, regeneration and capacity development.
Grounding what you do in science: Drawing on components of systems thinking, qualitative research and psychometric assessment to give your data collection more weight and depth.
Designing and facilitating participatory and inclusive approaches to evaluation.
Providing tips, templates and resources to invite all stakeholders into the conversation.

Building on the benefits of the impact evaluation Unity Effect conducted for the programme in 2022, the organizing team pursued a similar analysis for its 2023 edition. This continuation permitted us to identify common trends and build on key recommendations, whilst also preserving the uniqueness of each edition and participant. The team continues to rely on Unity Effect’s expertise to adapt future editions.

Linda Peterhans 2024

Linda Peterhans

Programme Manager for Youth Leadership, Kofi Annan Foundation

With Unity Effect, we have a partner who understands our approach very well and with whom we can tackle impact measurement and management (IMM) for our project in an agile and adaptive way. The regenerative impact measurement approach in particular fits very well with our vision at SEND e.V. Through close collaboration with Unity Effect and their outstanding support, we can learn a lot ourselves to build our own competence and expertise in the IMM area!

Martha Marik

Project Manager, SEND e.V.

Pricing

Based on our core principles to empower collaboration and solidarity we aim at a pricing that feels fair and appropriate for both parties.

Day Rates

EUR

Net

EUR +19% VAT

Day rates apply due to the customised nature of this service.

The exact day rate is determined together with the customer, based on what feels fair and appropriate for both parties.

Case Study: Evaluating the Kofi Annan Changemakers Initiative

Unity Effect has been working with the Kofi Annan Foundation since June 2022, both to design and facilitate online and in-person sessions for the Changemakers Initiative, and to evaluate the impact of the programme. This case study focuses on the impact evaluation and outlines how we designed and implemented an evaluation framework, based on our approach to Regenerative Impact Evaluation.

Measurement as a regenerative practice

Reconceiving why, how and what we measure can have tremendous leverage. Instead of pressuring ourselves to achieve external goals and meeting reporting deadlines, we could see the process of measurement as an ally on our path to learn, grow and deepen relationships.

The Art of Measuring Change

What are your associations with words such as “measurement”, “evaluation” or “indicator”? For many people these words sound annoying at best, and there are good reasons for it. Yet it can be a deeply empowering process that reveals hidden opportunities and structural challenges, creating empathy between groups of people.

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