Many researchers find the impact sections of their grant applications among the most challenging to complete. This guide explains exactly what you need to write in the two separate impact sections in a Research Council bid (your impact summary and your pathway to impact), and also applies to the impact sections of grant applications for other funders. Click on the podcast logo here for an extended audio version of this guide or scroll to the bottom for a summary video version.
A strong impact summary and pathway to impact can make the difference between getting funded or not if your application is tied with others in the “danger zone” near the funding cut-off. Being able to demonstrate impact is even more important if you are applying for funding for the Global Challenges Research Fund, where you have to demonstrate how your work will contribute to Overseas Development Assistance.
You can see best practice examples of impact summaries and pathways to impact here. If you have a good example, get in touch - the more examples we receive, the more useful this resource will be.
What should be in my impact summary?
The impact summary is meant to answer just two questions:
1. Who might benefit from this research?
2. How might they benefit from this research?
To answer these questions, all you need to do is to: i) Clearly articulate impact goals (not dissemination or knowledge exchange goals – that’s part of your pathway to impact); and ii) list (and group) your publics and/or stakeholders. The next two sections explain how...
How can I identify powerful impact goals?
Start by identifying clear impact goals, if possible making them as specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) as possible. Struggling? Try these tips:
Visualise yourself at the end of your project having achieved an impact that everyone is talking about. Where are you and what can you see? What has changed? What are people saying about how they have benefited?
Make sure your impact goals aren’t simply about communicating your research findings
If they are, then ask yourself who is most likely to be interested in your work outside academia, and how those who hear about your work are likely to benefit from or use what they learn
If you don’t know the answer to these questions, just focus on trying to identify the aspects of your work that you think people outside academia are most likely to be interested in. Then ask yourself why you think they might be interested in this aspect of the work
If you’re still struggling, go out and speak to some of the people you think might be interested, and ask them what interests them most, what might make it more interesting/relevant to them, and how they would like to benefit from or use your work
If you have a goal that is all about communication rather than impact, then you might have a good idea of the sorts of modes of communication you want to use (e.g. social media, film), and an alternative is to work back from the communication method you’re interested in using, to the people who will engage with that method, and then their interests and how they will benefit. Beware that in some cases you may discover that the communication method you want to use will not actually reach people who are interested or can use your work (for this reason it is always best to start with the goal and/or your publics/stakeholders first, before choosing your pathways to impact)
Download the Fast Track Impact Planning template for a structured method of linking impact goals to publics/stakeholders, research findings and pathways to impact. If you find it hard starting with the goals, try and start by identifying your publics/stakeholders and what they might be interested in, and then work back from there to your goals
How do I know who might benefit from my work?
Now you’ve got some clear impact goals, you need to identify the publics and/or stakeholders that will benefit when these goals have been achieved. Here are some tips to make this easy:
If you have limited knowledge and experience of publics/stakeholders working in your area, team up with a colleague who knows more. If you have time and contacts, consider inviting someone from outside academia who works with the people you want to help, and get them to advise you on the key groups you need to reach out to
For stakeholders, consider the relative interest each group or organisation has in your work, and their relative influence over your ability to achieve your impact goals. This influence could be negative (blocking you from achieving impact) or positive (enabling you to achieve things that would not have been possible without their help)
For publics, in addition to considering their relative interest in your work, consider the extent to which different groups (e.g. demographics, interest groups) might benefit from your work
See the graphics below for examples of actions you can take with each of the categories of publics and stakeholders that emerge from this analysis
Reach out to as many of the groups that emerge as benefiting strongly or being highly influential before you submit your grant application to get their feedback and help with your pathway to impact. This will lead to a stronger, more credible pathway and will give these groups a greater sense of joint ownership, making them more likely to engage if you get funded
Download the Fast Track Impact stakeholder and publics analysis template to do a full analysis. You won’t have room to put all of this information in your impact summary or pathway, but you will be able to use this information to group publics and stakeholders into categories (e.g. third sector, business, policy, or different sectors, socio-economic classes or interests), make strategic choices about who to highlight as key collaborators and give you a level of detail that will make your impact summary and pathway highly believable
This infographic shows how you can identify, categorise and prioritise publics and stakeholders for engagement, prioritising publics who will benefit most, and identifying the most influential stakeholders who can help you achieve impacts:
What are the essential things every pathway to impact should include?
According to JeS Help the Research Councils are looking for four things:
1. Activities that actively engage relevant stakeholders/publics;
2. Activities that meet their needs, interests and priorities;
3. A clear plan (including "timing, personnel, skills, budget, deliverables and feasibility”; and
4. Your track record with stakeholder/public engagement and impact.
Fast Track Impact did an analysis of pathways to impact that led to 4* impact case studies, which identified a number of important points. The Research Councils have great advice of their own here, and at the bottom of the page are links to advice on writing pathways to impact by each of the Research Councils. Here, I have tried to condense this mountain of advice down to the 10 most important things you need to make sure you don't forget:
1. Be specific
The number one piece of advice is to be specific. Tell reviewers exactly who you will work with (not just government, or even a particular department, but the specific policy team and if you have it the name of your contact in that team). Specify your goals clearly, with specific indicators that will tell you when each goals has been met. Explain how you will complete each activity in credible detail and why this is the best way of achieving a specific impact e.g. instead of social media, identify the platform you will use, who you will target that is on that platform, and what impact goals you will be able to preferentially achieve via this medium.
2. Demonstrate demand or interest in your work
Find evidence of growing public interest in the issues you are studying, numbers of people attending public engagement events or watching programmes linked to your subject. Demonstrate that stakeholders want/need your work, and if possible co-develop your pathway to impact (and in some cases the whole project) in collaboration with them. Establish an advisory panel (there is actually peer-reviewed evidence that these lead to impact more than many other pathways) and name the people you have invited, indicating where they have confirmed involvement.
3. Check you have activities to reach each of your goals
Systematically check if you have activities that will take you to each of your impact goals, and that you have identified activities that match the needs and preferences of each public/stakeholder group you identified in your impact summary.
4. Make it two-way
Where possible, focus on two-way engagement with publics and stakeholders rather than one-way communication of findings, so you get feedback and can adapt your approach to be as relevant and useful as possible. There is research evidence that projects that co-design outputs in collaboration with the people who need them, achieve greater uptake of their outputs because they are more relevant and people have a sense of shared ownership. Even for communication outputs like policy briefs, getting feedback from your target audience during the writing process can significantly increase the likelihood that your communication hits is mark.
5. Link to your impact track record
Talk about your track record on achieving impact, ideally with the groups and issues linked to your proposal. It is difficult to “prove” that you will be able to do what you are suggesting you will do, and some of the best evidence you have is a track record of having delivered impacts for these groups in these areas in the past. If you haven’t got a track record yourself, consider bringing someone into your team who does and get them to work with you on your pathway to impact.
6. Build in impact evaluation
Have a plan for evaluating whether or not you are moving towards or away from impact, which will tell you when you have achieved your goals. The process of identifying indicators will help you identify clearer and more credible impact goals. Thinking in detail about how you will know if you achieved impact will often identify risks and challenges that you can prepare for, making your plan even more credible. You can build in any costs of monitoring and evaluating impact into your proposal.
7. Cost it
Cost your pathway to impact and justify your request for these resources (if you are short of room in your Justification of Resources you can refer reviewers to your pathway to impact and vice versa). This shows how seriously you are taking impact, and adds credibility to your claim that these activities will actually happen. Some directed calls for proposals from the Research Councils in the past have suggested approximately 10% of the total budget should go to support Pathways to Impact. Researchers typically put in significantly less than this, fearing negative feedback from reviewers on their "value for money", but anything between 5% and 10% is reasonable.
8. Weave in impact to your research plan
If possible, weave your pathway to impact into your research plan, cross-referencing to it from your case for support at relevant points.
9. Keep it simple
Use plain English and make your pathway to impact stand alone (e.g. spelling out acronyms), as a lay member of a funding panel may only read the impact related parts of your proposal in any detail.
10. Seek specialist impact pre-review feedback
Don't rely on academic pre-reviewers to provide feedback on the impact sections of your proposal. Instead, seek feedback from someone in your University who specialises in impact, or if possible, get feedback on these sections from someone who works with the publics or stakeholders you want to benefit.
What if I am doing pure research that will not have any impact?
It is really difficult to come up with any sort of impact for some very pure, non-applied projects. In this case you cannot get away without producing an impact summary and pathway to impact if you want funding from the Research Councils. You don't have to use all the characters and pages you are given, but you do need to think about what the next steps might be, even if these happen many years after your research is done, that might possibly provide economic or societal benefit. You don't have to be right and no-one will hold you to this - just make some educated guesses. Do not, however, be tempted to include additional benefits for academics, students and the academy in this section, or you may risk your pathway to impact being deemed "unacceptable", requiring you to revise it before funding can be granted.
What are some of the most common mistakes people make in their pathway to impact and impact summary?
I've reviewed proposals for five out of the seven Research Councils and sat on funding panels for a number of Research Councils, EU and national governments. Here are a few of the most common mistakes I have seen:
No clear impact goals (or the goals are just about communicating the research to stakeholders or publics)
Benefits for researchers and the academy are included in the impact summary and/or pathway to impact, commonly including training and career benefits for early career researchers and students, and conference and workshops that will mainly be attended by researchers. Cut and paste them into your academic beneficiaries section and start again. If you genuinely want to include capacity building for your research team or students as part of your impact, explain how they will be able to use their skills and experience outside the academy to generate societal or economic benefits, and consider how you will these achieve these benefits at scale, and evidence that they actually happen
Social science data collection methods are replicated from the case for support in the pathway to impact, claiming that the knowledge or engagement gained from these methods will generate impact
Public engagement for the sake of it – you have a clear pathway to impact via policy or industry and the reality is that your work is so niche, very few members of the public would be interested, but you’re going to bore the socks off a bunch of unsuspecting passers-by because you felt you had to add public engagement into your pathway to impact
Vague plans lacking detail are rarely credible
The impact summary is copied and pasted into the pathway for impact or vice versa
Even worse, copying and pasting from someone else’s pathway to impact
Finally, many people remove any impact goals and associated activities that are uncertain or high risk, leaving only a small number of highly conservative outcomes and activities, which fail to inspire or excite reviewers or panel members. Your funder will not expect to see every goal achieved in the same way as your research objectives, so the risks of dreaming big are relatively low, and the higher you aim, the higher you are likely to reach. You should, however, only ever promise to do things that are credible and feasible, that you intend to actually pursue.
If you have spotted something I've missed or disagree with anything I've suggested, please comment below. In the meantime, check out these best practice examples of impact summaries and pathways to impact . If you have a good example, get in touch. I believe that by sharing good practice, we can spread innovation, drive up standards in grant writing and improve the likelihood that research delivers impact.
Get more advice on writing pathways to impact from your Research Council: