Reviewed: May 2025
The pathway to impact is rarely linear, continuous or discipline specific. Instead, it often involves many different funders, research teams, and practitioners over a long period of time and can deliver outcomes that were not anticipated. In general, the process of research is a discovery without a guaranteed or known outcome at the start. This is why most research funded by our members is given as a grant where the money must be freely given with no expectation of direct benefit, and the funder must receive no direct benefit in return.
The cumulative nature of impact makes it challenging to track in an effective way, leading to limited or incomplete reporting. Impact should be considered at all stages of the research funding cycle to ensure there are appropriate means to monitor and evaluate the impact of funded research retrospectively and/or on a continuous basis as needed.
The below pages aim to provide guidance on how charities can track, assess and showcase the impact of the research they fund, providing tools for capturing research impact: