Communication: Storytelling and impact measurement

Securing recognition and future funding takes two things: a story that shows what your work changed, and evidence that your communications reached people. This section is about communicating impact - turning outputs into stories and measuring whether your comms worked. For assessing the impact of the work itself, see the Impact module.

Status

ready

Time to complete

15 minutes

Primary audience

Node Coordinators, Communications Officers, Project Managers

Rewrite a project output as an impact story using a simple, repeatable structure
Frame the same achievement differently for policymakers, funders and researchers
Choose meaningful communications KPIs instead of vanity metrics
Link outreach activities to outcomes that matter for your Node's sustainability

Good work doesn’t speak for itself. In a consortium where funding and recognition depend on demonstrating value, two things make the difference: a story that shows what your work changed, and evidence that your communications actually reached people.

This section is about communicating impact – not assessing it. For methodologies to measure the impact of the work itself (socio-economic value, organisational change), that’s the job of the Impact module; here we focus on telling the story and tracking whether the telling worked.

Part 1 – From output to story

The trap: reporting activities, not impact

Most research communication describes what was done – “we ran a workshop”, “we delivered D3.2”, “we trained 17 people”. That’s an activity log. Funders, policymakers and Boards care about what changed as a result.

Important: An activity is something you did. An impact is something that changed because you did it. “We ran a mentoring programme” is an activity; “Nodes now use it as the model for their own leadership investment” is impact. Lead with the second.

A simple structure

You don’t need narrative theory. One repeatable arc covers most cases:

Challenge (why it mattered) → What we did → What changed (the outcome) → So what (why it matters to this audience).

Lead with the change, not the process.
Name the people involved – impact is human, and people stories travel furthest (see Section 6: Writing for Non-Writers).
Anchor it in one piece of evidence: a number, a quote, a case study.

See it in practice

The clearest ELIXIR example is the ELEAD before-and-after – the same Annual Report content written first as a list of activities, then as an impact story for the people who shape policy and funding. Read both versions side by side; nothing was invented, only reframed.

Same story, different audience

Impact isn’t one message. Reframe the same achievement for whoever you’re talking to (this builds on Section 2: Understanding your audience):

Audience	What they want to hear
Policymakers	The societal benefit – who is better off, and how
Funders	Value for investment and evidence of sustainability
Researchers	What they can now do, use or join

Exercise

Take a recent output from your Node. Write it twice:

As an activity (“we did X”).
As an impact story using the arc above (challenge → what we did → what changed → so what).

Then pick your top audience and adjust the “so what” line for them.

Part 2 – Measuring whether your comms worked

Why measure at all

Measurement turns a nice story into a credible one, and a credible story into a funding argument. It’s how you show – not just claim – that your Node’s communications have reach and effect.

Note: Measure your communications here, not the impact of the research itself. “Did our outreach reach the right people and lead somewhere?” is a comms question. “What was the socio-economic value of the service?” belongs to the Impact module and frameworks like RI-PATHS.

Activities, outputs, outcomes

Connect what you do to what it achieves:

Activity – the thing you ran: a webinar, a news item, a social campaign, a policy brief.
Output – did people engage? Attendees, page views, downloads, impressions, shares.
Outcome – did it lead anywhere? New service users, collaboration requests, funding inquiries, policy mentions, media pickup.

Outputs are easy to count; outcomes are what actually matter. Always try to link an activity to the outcome it was meant to drive.

Pick meaningful KPIs, not vanity metrics

A big follower count means little if no one acts. Choose a few indicators tied to real goals. For an ELIXIR Node these might be:

Registrations for a training event listed on TeSS
Click-throughs from a Weekly Brief item
Downloads of a resource or report
New users of a service after a campaign
Policy mentions or inclusion in the Annual Report
Funding or collaboration inquiries traced back to an activity

A simple impact tracker

You don’t need special software – a shared spreadsheet works. Track each activity against the outcome it serves:

Activity	Audience	Output (engagement)	Outcome it serves	Result
Webinar on a new service	Researchers	80 registrations, 55 attended	New service users	12 new users in 2 months
Policy brief	National funder	Sent + meeting held	Continued funding	Cited in funding discussion
Joint social campaign	Wider community	3 Nodes posting, 4× reach	Awareness / collaboration	2 collaboration inquiries

Use Google Analytics (set up once – see Section 9: Automation and tools) for the web numbers, and your platforms’ built-in analytics for social. Gather a quote or short case study where you can – the ELEAD Impact Report’s four personal case studies are a good model for turning numbers into evidence.

The two-minute impact pitch

When someone asks “what did your Node achieve this year?”, you should be able to answer in two minutes:

Challenge → what we did → what changed → and the one number that proves it.

If you can say that clearly, you have both a story and the evidence behind it.

→ Impact module – for assessing the impact of the work itself (the “Impact First” approach), beyond communicating it.

Dive deeper

Category	Resource	Description
External resource	Google Analytics	Free web analytics - set up a dashboard once to track website traffic instead of pulling numbers by hand.
External resource	RI-PATHS impact assessment framework	An EU-developed methodology for assessing the socio-economic impact of research infrastructures - for impact assessment beyond communications.