How to Use Impact Pack


BUILD YOUR CORE STRATEGY

In this activity, participants develop impact strategies for their media projects and make changes based on the needs of other stakeholders. Lay the the cards out from left to right in order to build a simple story about your media project’s engagement strategy and outcomes.

  1. Interface: What platforms and experiences are you using to connect with your audiences?
  2. Senses: Which senses does your project employ?
  3. Audiences: Who are you serving?
  4. Engagement Models: How will you involve or inspire them?
  5. Connectors: How will the pieces of your strategy fit together? Use the equal sign to start the exercise.
  6. Responses: How does your project make people feel?
  7. Outcomes: What are the results?

Select no more than three cards from each suit—this is how you will build your basic strategy. Lay down the equal sign, and put the responses and outcomes on the right.

Now, refine your core impact strategy:
Once you’ve laid out an initial strategy, use the rest of the Connectors cards to edit it. You can do this for yourself, or make changes based on the suggestions of other stakeholders. For example, another participant could play the role of “funder” or “community member.”

  • What would happen if you lost half of your funding? Use the “Subtract” card to cut pieces of your strategy.
  • What if there was a community crisis that revealed the need for more coverage? Use the “Add” card to add an element onto your strategy.
  • Which aspects of your strategy need to grow? Use the “Scale Up” card to indicate leverage points.
  • What’s really important? Use the “Greater Than” card to prioritize.


OTHER ACTIVITIES

Rapidfire brainstorming: Pick just one card from each suit and conceptualize a project around a particular issue or goal.

Competing roles: Have each of your team members be responsible for a particular suit, and then come together to make the case how for the cards they chose fit into the overall picture.

Begin from the end: Build your theory of change starting from the outcomes and moving back through engagement models and audiences to help determine which interface to use. This is useful for media projects with specific advocacy goals.

The Sky is the limit: People use these cards in lots of ways. Invent your own and drop us a note. We’ve included blank cards for your ideas. Is there a card we should include? Draw it, snap a photo, and send it our way: cards@dotconnectorstudio.com