Good impact mea­sure­ment and man­age­ment are essen­tial to max­i­miz­ing the pos­i­tive out­comes of any start­up or invest­ment. That’s where the IMM­PACT Guide comes in. It com­bines the IMM­PACT Mod­el, a prac­ti­cal frame­work, with the accom­pa­ny­ing Lean Impact Jour­ney play­book. This sec­tion focus­es on the mod­el itself.

Founders face enough chal­lenges – devel­op­ing a viable busi­ness mod­el, secur­ing fund­ing, nav­i­gat­ing legal issues. But if you’re build­ing an impact start­up, there’s even more on your plate. You also need to define, man­age, and deliv­er social and/​or envi­ron­men­tal impact. The prob­lem? Most ear­ly-stage teams lack the time, mon­ey, and exper­tise to set up those sys­tems from the start. And most exist­ing tools are too com­plex or resource-heavy to use with­out seri­ous over­head.

Wait­ing to imple­ment impact process­es until lat­er only makes things more com­pli­cat­ed. Yet impact man­age­ment and mea­sure­ment is cru­cial for achiev­ing mean­ing­ful results for your tar­get groups, align­ing your team around a shared mis­sion, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing that impact to the out­side world – espe­cial­ly to poten­tial investors.

This is exact­ly where the IMM­PACT Mod­el comes in. It’s a hands-on, easy-to-use tool built for:

• Impact start­up founders: We define impact star­tups as busi­ness­es with a core mis­sion to tack­le major social or envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. Our focus is on for-prof­it mod­els, but non­prof­its can also use the frame­work.
• Impact investors: Espe­cial­ly those pro­vid­ing (ear­ly-stage) ven­ture cap­i­tal or just get­ting start­ed in the impact invest­ing space.
• Ecosys­tem builders: From start­up advis­ers to pol­i­cy­mak­ers – any­one work­ing to sup­port founders or improve the con­di­tions for impact entre­pre­neur­ship.

The IMM­PACT Mod­el: Ori­en­ta­tion frame­work for IMM require­ments

The IMM­PACT Mod­el pro­vides a clear struc­ture for inte­grat­ing impact man­age­ment and mea­sure­ment (IMM) through­out the life of your start­up – from idea to launch, growth, and scale.

The IMM­PACT Mod­el helps founders cut through the noise and build mis­sion-aligned process­es, inte­grate impact into their busi­ness mod­el, and start mea­sur­ing what real­ly mat­ters. This also offers a sol­id foun­da­tion for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with impact-focused investors.

For investors, the IMM­PACT Mod­el pro­vides a stan­dard­ized frame­work to bet­ter eval­u­ate star­tups and sup­port their growth in impact man­age­ment. It offers a com­mon foun­da­tion for strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ing and mea­sur­able suc­cess.

And for start­up con­sul­tants sup­port orga­ni­za­tions, the mod­el fills a major gap: the lack of con­sis­tent IMM stan­dards for ear­ly-stage ven­tures. It helps advis­ers struc­ture their pro­grams and pro­vide tai­lored sup­port that meets star­tups where they are.

Thanks to all who have con­tributed to the IMM­PACT mod­el!

The IMM­PACT mod­el was also shaped with input from a group of expe­ri­enced IMM experts from across Ger­many. Their insights and expe­ri­ence helped ensure the mod­el is not just the­o­ret­i­cal­ly sound – but actu­al­ly use­ful in prac­tice:

• Amyn Vogel (LMU)
• Belin­da Büch­n­er (TU Munich)
• Car­o­la Vogel (SEA Acad­e­my)
• Felizia von Schweinitz (Uni­ver­si­ty of Ham­burg)
• Jel­la Riester­er (Grün­hof)
• Juliane von Böse­lager (FASE)
• Odin Müh­len­bein (Ashoka)
• Sébastien Mar­tin (Impact Asso­ciates)
• Sumaya Islam (Uni­ver­si­ty of Pader­born)
• Young-Jin Choi (Vidia Equi­ty)