From world crisis to all sustainability challenges that are close on the horizon: Our times ask for greater agility and transparency in what we do as an organization and a community of changemakers, and how we tell the stories of the impact we create. This need of sharing a clearer & more tangible picture of our work is what moved us during the last few years to create the oikos Impact Matrix.
The Impact Matrix is a real-time reliability and accountability tool for oikos International. It helps us to plan and to track & trace the milestones of our work in real time, while giving insight into the broader impact we have – both, regarding our international activities and the work of our community. Anyone can easily understand our priorities and achievements as we walk the talk by browsing through the different elements.
The story of the Impact Matrix started all the way back in 2019 with the formation of a working group which wished to explore new and innovative ways of tracing our impact. After initially finalizing the concept online, the project was continued by our co-presidents Darija & Sophie for the past 1,5 years, working on the existing outline, refining it and making it more accessible and user-friendly.
With back and frontend infrastructure in place, the user & field guides followed along with the creation of the necessary databases and the website platform, including the mechanisms for chapter integration into the Impact Matrix. Initially the concept was introduced to the oikos international Team earlier this year and finalized at the Team Days in Spring of 2022.
Now we are excited to finally launch the Impact Matrix for the entire world and see it become one of the key tools for evaluating and presenting our impact both within and beyond the oikos Community!
Tracking & tracing our international impact
oikos is running several international initiatives with the aim of tending the oikos Community and supporting them in their missions and visions. The matrix creates an overview over all of these initiatives, their developments & strategic focuses and simultaneously it serves as a continuous impact dashboard for our community work. Both ongoing and one-time projects use the tool to plan and report back on their milestones and achievements.
On top of that, the Impact Matrix is also meant for tracking and tracing the impact of our work in strengthening and reinventing oikos as an organization. It opens the doors to evaluate and showcase not only our main initiatives tending the oikos Community, but also seemingly intangible elements of our organizational development, like organizational culture, information flow, collaborative fundraising etc.
The Impact Matrix is a single tool to present all innovative actions we take in fields like organizational evolution, fundraising, communications, IT etc.
The Structure
Visualized, on the horizontal axis, the matrix covers the fields of leading, learning, living and organizing as metaphors which are following oikos’ main initiative focuses. The vertical axis shows a distinction between movements on the international level, collaborations with and from the community and last but not least flagship activities of our chapters and community. Merging all these perspectives helps us and the world to get a better insight into the full range of our impact.
How it works?
Each oikos sub-circle is responsible for an initiative or a project, and should ideally have a member with the dedicated role of maintaining the Impact Matrix. As an Impact Matrix Coordinator, this person is tasked with supervising and hosting quarterly check-ins, as well as clean-ups, however it is still a team-coordinated effort, nourishing the self-organization.
The process of creating and maintaining Impact Matrix is fairly simple and straightforward divided into three stages. Feel free to find more details in the FAQ section at the bottom of the impact & orientation web-page on our website.
Stay tuned for more information about the oikos Impact Matrix!
Over the upcoming weeks we will be discussing elements relevant to the process in more depth, storyline, values and structure behind it, as well as the Community Impact Contest.
The Impact Matrix is already up on our website! Check it out by clicking the button below!
[simple-button href=”https://oikos-international.org/about_us/impact-orientation/” color=”red”]Impact Matrix[/simple-button]
