2. What is impact coaching?

Impact coaching arose from the identified need to develop the assessment expertise of youth sector organisations. In 2022, a study was carried out as part of the “Evaluation and monitoring of the activities of youth organisations in the Nordics - what could be learned among the Nordic countries?” project, which identified the challenges of the organisation sector in developing impact assessment. According to the report, the organisations recognise the importance and need for assessment both from the perspective of the development of the organisation and from the perspective of societal impact. However, organisations do not have enough time to carry out assessment and create plans. Assessment is often trampled on by more acute work tasks. One of the starting points of the impact coaching has been the desire to provide the participants with the time and place to develop the assessment of their own organisation. The aim has been to stop for a moment and thereby find the time to carry out the assessment.

On the other hand, organisations may not always have sufficient expertise to assess their own activities. The need for competence development has been noticed, for example, in the operations of the Sivis Study Centre, where organisations have long been trained in impacting and assessment.

We identified four different perspectives related to the need to increase impact competence:

Social point of view: is the important work we do visible, is it sufficiently appreciated and is it useful to society?
Financier’s point of view: is the work we do cost-effective and does it produce results that are worth financing?
Perspective of one’s own work: are we doing the right things, is there demand for what we do and will our actions lead to the desired results?
Young person’s point of view: what does the young person get from the activity, does the activity increase the well-being of young people?

We wanted to implement the coaching by setting an example, so that the participants were openly told how the effectiveness and successfulness of this coaching is assessed. Objectives were defined for the coaching and communicated to the participants at different stages.

The objectives of the impact coaching were defined as follows:

The participant is able to set goals and indicators for the operations of their own organisation
The participant is able to build an assessment process for their own organisation
The participant is able to describe and communicate the impact of their own activities
The participant is able to utilise assessment skills in funding applications
The participant is able to select and use concrete tools to carry out and develop the assessment of their organisation

In addition, initial and final surveys were carried out in the coaching, which were used to map the competence level of the participants. Feedback was also actively requested after the activities. More information on these surveys will be provided later in this manual.

Already at the initial stage, it was stated that the organisation should receive concrete help and benefits from the coaching in order to be able to develop their own organisation. An assessment plan was identified as a tool for developing the organisation’s daily operations, and the coaching was built around developing the plan. This was also influenced by the fact that hardly any assessment plans have been made in the organisation sector. The assessment plan was provided a broad framework, and different existing models were presented to the participants. However, each participating organisation had the freedom to implement the plan in the desired format and to target it in the way they wanted. In this way, it was possible to take into account the differences between the organisations and the different starting points in the assessment work.