All What Works Centres (WWCs) aim to have impact by getting evidence into policy and/or practice. However, because every Centre has different aims, practices, audiences, funding models, staffing levels and size, their understanding of impact, and how they measure and communicate their impact, can differ.
Our preliminary research based on interviews with WWCs and their stakeholders illustrates that there are various understandings of impact. These include aspects as varied as being a credible organisation in the evidence-policy-practice sphere, generating and summarising strong and trusted evidence, building relationships and networks with decision-makers, and helping people to implement the evidence. These meanings of impact are more informal and complex than causal understandings such as ‘we said this and policy makers implemented it’ (which rarely happens).
The launch event
We launched the project at the Evidence Quarter in London in June 2023 with 22 participants from 10 WWCs. The event helped build interest and momentum around the project and allowed participants with similar roles to network face-to-face and start discussing the three main aspects of impact.
We carried out three types of activities:
- A networking session where participants discussed what they wanted to get out of the project and how they could contribute to it. The figure below shows that there was general agreement on the main goals from this project.

- A second session explored what impact meant to different participants, and the factors which influence this in their WWC. Here, WWCs unearthed the multiple meanings of impact, from the traditional causal understanding of impact as a result of evidence products being used, to the attribution problem and the difficulty of proving impact when an organisation sits in this evidence-policy-practice space.Attendees illustrated that preparing the ground for impact such as developing robust evidence of relevant interventions was significant, but the capacity building work that Centres conduct in developing topic and evidence literacy amongst their stakeholders through training was also important. Impact was measured by changes in awareness, behaviours, systems, and policy, which can help to influence systemic change.WWCs also stressed the many challenges in achieving impact such as the capacity and skills within their own organisation as well as those of their stakeholders. Participants discussed seizing windows of opportunity and their ability to understand the wider system allowing them to be strategic and targeted in their actions.
- The third session gave WWCs the opportunity to share their experiences of generating impact. The Centre for Ageing Better highlighted their work in achieving government commitment to increase accessibility standards. The Centre for Homelessness Impact discussed a co-produced project with councils which produced a meaningful and measurable framework for reducing homelessness. What Works Growth explained the training they conduct for local policy-makers in using evidence and logic models). What Works Crime Reduction shared their crime reduction maturity model which assesses how evidence based an organisation is.
The sharing of these impact stories led to discussions on a series of topics such as:
- What are the benefits (e.g., credibility and convening power) and drawbacks (e.g., perception of being close to government) of being a WWC
- The need and desire for WWCs – who have some similarities in issues and aims – to share practices and tools across the WWN, and document change to allow others to pick up that practice. Participants asked whether it would be possible to collate all impact-type activities such as theories of change, mission, visions and stories of impact in one place. This is something that we are exploring now.
- The question of how to measure impact and at what level (strategic versus practical Impact)
- Can we develop a shared understanding of impact?
Next steps
We are planning a series of further events for WWCs to learn from each other via learning and sharing workshops on targeted themes that have emerged during the first event and bilateral discussions. Our next event is currently being developed around the following topics:
- What does the literature say about defining impact and approaches to impact and its measurement?
- How do WWCs conceptualise impact and how to achieve it, and how does that compare to the literature?
- Optional item: How do you engage effectively with government (national and local) to have greatest impact?
More information is available on the project here. If you like to get in touch, please contact Eleanor MacKillop (Eleanor.mackillop@wcpp.org.uk) or James Downe (James.downe@wcpp.org.uk).