We live in a world with growing social challenges that deepen inequalities. As these issues escalate, social impact research and consulting have become more essential than ever.

Organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Bank are leading efforts in this space. However, what’s missing is a unified global strategy to drive systemic change.

Take world hunger, for example. Many organizations, such as Action Against Hunger, the United Nations World Food Programme, and Rise Against Hunger, work tirelessly to combat it. Yet, the UN projects more than 600 million people across the globe will face hunger in 2030 (United Nations).

The intent and resources exist, yet these challenges persist for a reason, namely underlying root causes that leave them resistant to change. The key to meaningful impact lies in a strategic, data-driven approach that targets two or three high-leverage pressure points that determine the size, intensity, and scale of the problem. By tackling these points, you can drive measurable, scalable, and sustainable change.

How do we identify these pressure points? Through social impact consulting driven by in-depth research.

The scattergun approach

Too often, social impact initiatives fall into the scattergun approach of tackling too many challenges at once, spreading resources thin, and making outcomes harder to measure and sustain.

When long-term impact becomes elusive, initiatives are often abandoned. BP, for instance, initially aimed to cut emissions by 35% by 2030 but scaled back to 20-30% within two years (Medium). Other companies have followed suit to reduce targets and pull back on green investments.

What does ‘moving the dial’ actually mean?

The moral of the story? Moving the dial isn’t just about making progress. It’s about making real headway in the only metric that matters: the percentage of the problem solved. We can deliver programs, measure outputs, and even see results, but if those efforts don’t meaningfully change the gap between where we are and what full resolution looks like, we haven’t truly moved the dial. Social impact consulting, at its best, helps changemakers get them by moving beyond bold statements or short-term wins and articulating:

• Tangible progress in a given area.
• Measurable change backed by data.
• Strategies for enabling scalability and sustainability.

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How social impact consultants can focus their efforts

Successful social impact projects are built on focus. Instead of a trial-and-error approach, organizations must target a selection of critical points for maximum impact per dollar invested. The best way to achieve this is by prioritizing four key actions:

• Use social impact measurement frameworks to identify and define precise impact goals for the social issue you want to address. At ERI, we’ve developed a system-based impact per dollar measurement that provides a clear answer to the question of what it will take to achieve the most impact per dollar invested to solve a specific problem.
• Leverage data and insights to enable data-driven decision-making that allows you to prioritize interventions that can deliver the most impact. From our experience, this means identifying the root causes of the problem that keep it resistant to change. Identify the two or three key intervention points that you have the resources to target and that may have an outsized impact on solving it.
• Align with local systems and stakeholders rather than external stakeholders. By engaging local communities, governments and businesses, you ensure that the impact produced is contextually relevant and sustainable for the population it is intended to support.
• Focus on scalability by prioritizing initiatives that can be expanded without incurring excessive additional costs. For example, digital learning programs that can scale across multiple regions could be an effective, lower-cost solution to addressing challenges around education or digital literacy.

If we apply these actions to a global issue, such as fatal and severe accidents, it would look something like this:

• As a changemaker, your goal may be to significantly decrease the number of fatal and severe accidents in your city. Using our impact per dollar measurement framework, you could clearly determine the steps it would take to achieve this goal.
• Our research at ERI has identified the key root causes of the issue, which include suboptimal responses, ineffective in-car safety practices, and inadequate in-car safety accessories. Your available resources would determine which of these pressure points to target in order to achieve the most impact.
• Partnering with local government and business entities would enable the production of relevant impact through educational programs, safety demonstrations, or even donations or fundraising drives to outfit cars with effective safety accessories – increasing the awareness and knowledge required among the target population that aids in tackling these pressure points.
• To maximize impact, these solutions would need to be scalable, meaning they could be adapted for different settings and groups within the population without fully depleting the available resources.

The role of leadership in driving meaningful change

Once you’ve answered the ‘where, what and how’, there’s still the risk of projects falling by the wayside without enough momentum to propel them forward. That’s where leadership comes in. In any organization, CEOs and decision-makers play a crucial role in focusing impact efforts – and maintaining that focus to ensure lasting impact.

Lego exemplifies how leadership drives impact. The company has set ambitious sustainability targets, with leadership playing a central role in maintaining progress. Prioritizing accountability by incorporating these targets into their business decisions (Sustainability Magazine), they’ve also remained transparent about setbacks faced in their exploration of sustainable alternatives, such as choosing to halt the production of bricks from recycled plastic bottles due to the high output of carbon emissions in comparison to the production of traditional lego bricks (The Conversation).

What Lego and other such companies demonstrate is the importance of being intentional, data-driven, and selective about where and how to invest your social impact resources. For companies unsure of where or how to start, partnering with social impact research firms like ERI is the best way to ensure your resources are used in a targeted and effective manner.

Impact with focus, not just intention

To drive impact, we can’t rely on intention alone. You must ask, where can we actually move the dial? Social impact research and consulting must be strategic and focus on specific pressure points where we can maximize resources and help organizations drive real, substantial, system-level change.

Businesses, researchers, consultants, nonprofits – alone, we can’t solve every problem. At the end of the day, true impact is about working together and doing things right.