Defining Impact: Practitioners' Brief

Organizations in international cooperation and humanitarian action face pressure from donors and the general public to prove their impact and justify their funding. As a result, they are rushing to provide evidence of “causal effects”, or evidence that shows that their interventions lead to positive changes.

At the same time, as organizations tackle increasingly complex challenges amid the ongoing global crises, many are adopting system strengthening and transformation approaches. Such approaches are themselves more complex and require a systemic interpretation of impact: one that acknowledges that organizations interact with a system, and that their work affects not just the people in the system but also the system as a whole.

However, most impact definitions that are currently in use by organizations in international cooperation and humanitarian assistance neither recognize impact clearly as a “causal effect”, nor do they include a systemic interpretation of impact. Thus, Welthungerhilfe has developed a new and unique definition that satisfies both of these conditions.