The CivicActions Impact Criteria Template is a tool used to evaluate whether a potential project’s impact aligns with our company’s core values. The Template is used by our Sales team while they evaluate an opportunity.
CivicActions has a core belief that one of the best ways that we could help amplify our positive impact was to support great clients. Helping them have a bigger impact can deliver greater results than anything our small team is able to accomplish on our own.
As such, we have always paid close attention to which projects we choose to pursue or not, taking into account not only our competitiveness and likelihood of implementation success, but also the type and level of impact on the world that the project would have.
In 2019, we formalized this process using an "Impact Scorecard" (shared in a blog post), based on a "P-Win" style scorecard. This was used to evaluate individual opportunities during the business development and sales process using a set of weighted criteria to evaluate the impact of the project on a number of different dimensions. The output of the scorecard was a single score that was used to help determine if we should pursue the opportunity or not.
This approach had some downsides, however. Many opportunities have a very tight timeline and voluminous documentation that was time-consuming to review and research. This made it hard to ensure we always have individuals available for review. Also, even though we tried to have at least 2 people review each opportunity, it often felt like we didn't have enough perspectives. Between these two issues we felt like this process wasn't as thoughtful as we would like.
That led us to this approach, which is based on the idea that working with the government (mostly the US Federal government) we have a pretty well defined set of potential customers. In the vast majority of cases a specific organizational unit (especially as the scope gets smaller and tighter) will have a clearly defined mission that is often quite stable over time. This means that rather than rushing to evaluate each opportunity as it comes in, we can evaluate the impact of these organizational units in advance, using a Red/Yellow/Green model and then use that evaluation for all opportunities that involve that unit. This allows us to be more thoughtful and thorough in our evaluation.
There is also always going to be scope for judgment and interpretation, so we wanted to make sure that we had a way to indicate which criteria were not sufficiently clear. To do this, we have a "Yellow" status that can be used to indicate that there is some ambiguity or uncertainty about the status of a criterion. This can be used to indicate that there is a need for further research or discussion based on the specific project we are pursuing. In many cases the outcome of these discussions can be used to refine the criteria.
To get started:
- Open the template in Google Sheets
- Make a copy of the template using
File > Make a copy... - Name the copy and share with the appropriate people in your organization.
- It is recommended to assemble a group/committee with several people from across the organization to develop and maintain the criteria
- Review the instructions tab to get an overview of how the template can be applied during the sales process
- Add positive and negative impact themes to the theme tab
- Adjust the tiers in the instructions and validation lookup as needed based on your organization’s needs
- Add to the "Criteria" tab. For each criterion:
- Use the primary/secondary/tertiary columns to indicate the scope
- For criteria based on organizations, the top level organization (e.g. US Federal Department of State, etc.) would be the primary
- Secondary and tertiary criteria can then be used to identify smaller organizational units and subunits (offices, programs, etc.) that have a different status
- If you work with US Federal organizations (Tier 2 in the template), you can use the lookup dropdown to identify organizations and smaller units using the OPM table (the fourth tab of the Template). This table includes data on the number of employees of each entity from OPM, as well as a status column that you can use to track whether your team has reviewed each row
- Identify the status for each criterion using the Red/Yellow/Green column
- Each Green status should be aligned with a positive impact theme
- Each Red status should be aligned with a negative impact theme
- Add any justification and notes to explain your reasoning
- Use the Status column to track the overall status of each criterion
- Once a criterion is approved, use the ID column to assign a fixed unique ID to it. The ID can be used to track which criterion is being used in your corporate CRM system as each decision is made
- There is a validation check for duplicate IDs: there is a "Next ID" cell in the instructions tab you can use to identify the next available ID
- Once some criteria are ready to be used, you are ready to start using this:
- Update the instructions tab and workflow diagram to ensure it matches your process and expectations around timing, etc.
- Ensure people are trained on the process of applying the criteria accurately and consistently, tracking in the CRM, and coordinating communications when a Yellow status is identified
- As needed, establish a rotation to ensure that Yellow status reviews can be addressed in a timely manner
- Establish a schedule for:
- Reviewing the application of the criteria to actual opportunities (using the IDs)
- Reviewing the criteria on a regular basis to ensure it they are still relevant and accurate
Because these discussions can be complex and nuanced with plenty of scope for varying opinions, we wanted to ground these conversations in a shared framework, and use that as the primary basis for each decision. To do this, we have a set of "Impact Themes" (both positive and negative) that follow from our company’s mission, vision, and values, and can be used to categorize impacts. We use these themes in the Impact Criteria and are also integrating them more broadly as we consider them from a program perspective. The ultimate goal is to better define and measure impact in our projects.
The process for developing impact themes will likely be unique to your organization. A good place to start is by looking at your organization’s mission, vision, and values and asking the team what this means to them.
There are various resources and ideas that can be helpful when developing these:
- Theory of Change and program monitoring and evaluation methodologies from the NGO world.
- Impact Business Model from B Corporation and other ESG frameworks.
- UN Sustainable Development Goals and other high level impact frameworks.
In general the instructions for identifying criteria state that the most specific relevant criteria should be used. We found it helpful to distinguish between different tiers of criteria that are each considered in turn. This provides a way to provide for overriding or fallback criteria.
In our case we used Tier 1 for overriding criteria, for example specific types of work that we want to prioritize regardless of the client organization.
Since the Federal government is our most common client, and since this has a well-defined organizational structure, we used this for Tier 2, so it can be clearly distinguished.
For Tier 3 we have some broadly defined criteria that cover some less common areas, including state, municipal and non-profit projects.
If a specific opportunity is outside these tiers, it is considered Yellow by default, and we can always add additional criteria after consideration.
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