Opening up data within the impact economy offers “exciting benefits” for wider civil society, a new report has found.
The think tank NPC’s Opening up Impact report, published this week, calls for a transition toward open knowledge within the impact economy to facilitate meaningful systems change.
The report argues that, while the social sector has made progress in impact measurement, valuable insights remain “locked” within individual organisations, hindering collective progress.
Anand Shukla, chief executive of the Henry Smith Foundation, which worked with NPC on the report, said: “Foundations enjoy the privilege of sitting on a unique and valuable store of data.
“Opening up that data offers exciting benefits for wider civil society.”
The report says there are examples of partnership working, place-based collaboration and collective impact initiatives that demonstrate alternatives are possible, the report says.
“There is much to learn from them about what is possible, whether they can help drive more shared and open knowledge, and whether they can help shift the norm away from individualism,” it says.
“While these models are not yet widespread, their success points to a clear opportunity: to extend what works, broaden participation and open these approaches up further.”
The report says openness is defined by “outward openness”, or transparency and sharing, and “inward openness”, which is inclusion and participation in knowledge creation.
Opening up Impact introduces a framework, the cycle of open impact, for embedding openness across four phases of organisational work.
The framework is based on the cycle of impact practice developed through the Inspiring Impact programme, which aimed to support good impact practice in the charity sector until it concluded in 2022.
The cycle of open impact’s four phases include planning – through the utilisation of open needs data, landscape reviews and open strategies.
The framework also includes a “do” phase, which involves implementing open service design and open data dashboards; the assess phase involves conducting open performance assessments and evaluations and the review phase is producing open impact reports and learning reviews.
Opening up Impact also introduces Open For All, NPC’s multi-year programme to support the impact economy to adopt open knowledge practices.
Tris Lumley, Open For All director at NPC, said: “Through guidance, tools, partnerships and collaborative initiatives, Open For All aims to develop practical, usable approaches to open knowledge, and support initiatives working at scale across places and themes.”
The programme aims to model what it means to work in the open, through transparent, inclusive practice, said Lumley.