Last Updated: March 31, 2021
Dear impact policymakers:
Here are your tools.
(For full functionality, please download the file instead of viewing in your browser.)
This Manual is the desktop guide to impact for policymakers at all levels. It will help you improve the lives of even more people than you’re reaching now, and it will help you deliver impact more effectively, efficiently, and with a clearer sense of the outcomes your policy efforts should generate.
Because, at the end of the day, the impact of any given policy is measured by the outcomes it enables.
Chapter 1: Overview
Mark M. Newberg, Stockbridge Advisors
Impact is the beneficial outcome or outcomes sought by an activity. But it’s not enough to say, “we want to have impact.” We have to focus on the processes that enable us to generate (and measure) those outcomes—just like effective policymaking.
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Chapter 2: Frameworks for Racial Equity
John Holdsclaw, IV, National Cooperative Bank with Mark M. Newberg and Kate Y. McCrery
The scars of inequity are now visible to all. The rifts and fissures inequity forges demand repair. And the junction between racial equity and public policy is an intersection that must be addressed.
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Chapter 3: Measuring Impactful Policies
Howard W. Buffett, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs
As a policymaker, one of the toughest challenges you will face is how to design policy that delivers the outcomes you desire. How do you define those outcomes? What are the activities and outputs that will make your policy successful?
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Chapter 4: Partnerships for Impact
Robert T. Lalka, Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane University
Partnerships are a response to a world that began to move faster than the institutions that governed it. Understanding government is only one part of charting a path to impactful policymaking. A policymaker must frequently understand and engage with leaders from business, philanthropy, and civil society.
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Why We Wrote This & How It Can Help You
In 2009, in Washington DC, a group of young policy advisors came together around a common, but undefined, ambition. They worked in different departments and in different staff positions, but they discovered each other based on a shared notion: that policy designed to “impact” societal issues at scale was poised to be something significant. Over the next several years, they (and many, many others in government, non-profits, and the private sector) helped to assemble some of the building blocks of what became the Impact Economy.
Now older, and more geographically dispersed, we recently looked back at those formative days of our impact journeys. We asked ourselves: What resources would have made our jobs easier a decade ago? What tools would have helped us (and others) develop more impactful policy, faster, better, and more effectively?
We all agreed on one answer: this Manual.
We’re giving you the nuts and bolts of what you need to know and what you ought to consider in creating more impactful policy.
Unlike your typical white paper, though, this Manual is built around the pace and process of the positions you hold and the multitude of challenges you face each day. In short, each chapter is meant to be short. And each chapter concludes with a “working” thumbnail: essentially, a specific list of to-do’s (and “must-remember’s”) for you to come back to, any time you need a refresher.
We’ve been there. We know that an easy day for you means only having to tackle a half-dozen things at once. We know that a light schedule means being double-booked only a handful of times. And we know that your challenge isn’t accessing more information; it’s condensing down the information you already have into actionable steps. Steps that lead toward the reason you signed up for this job in the first place: making lives better, and communities stronger, across the board.
This Manual is designed to help you do your job faster, better, and more effectively. It’s the one we didn’t have (but wish we did) when we were in your shoes a decade ago. And above all, it’s designed to help you generate measurable impact for those whom you serve.
Ready to get started? So are we.
