Building impact into a bid  

Setting a goal 

The first step in any impact plan is to set the goal of the impact(s) you want to achieve. This may change as the project develops, there are many steps along a project which can change this. This can be a basic simple impact to begin with, that will develop as the project continues, but it needs to be a precise objective. This will help you identify the indicators of successful impact and define the outcomes of your research project. Also, by defining a goal you will know what type of evidence you will need to collect to verify the impact claimed. 

Stakeholder analysis 

Stakeholders and beneficiaries can either be two separate groups of people or they can be the same group. A stakeholder is anybody interested in your research or anybody that could have an impact upon your research. A beneficiary is anybody that will be impacted by you research. When analysing who your stakeholders or beneficiaries are you need to ask yourself three important questions: 

  • Who is interested in my research?  
  • How might they influence my ability to achieve impact?  
  • Who is impacted?  

Using the Stakeholder Analysis Document, you can map out who may be your stakeholders/beneficiaries and the kinds of influence they will have on your project. 

Integrating impact into the bid 

There is no one size fits all integrating impact into your bid. When writing a bid, you should be tailoring the level of impact you detail to the criteria featured in the guidance. If it is an ‘impact-lite’ call then you should only put a small amount on impact into the bid, if the bid asks for a lot of detail on impact then you should follow accordingly. 

You should be integrating impact into each level of your bid ensuring that the problem statement includes your potential impact and the stakeholders/beneficiaries; your objectives section includes impact; and your research methods section details how you will achieve and evidence impact. You want to make it clear to the reviewer throughout these sections that impact is threaded throughout your bid: be as clear as possible even going as far as including diagrams and tables to illustrate your point.