Impact Accelerator

The Impact Accelerator is an intensive, 12-month programme for organisations that are committed to getting (even) better at what they do.

What we do

It is designed to foster a culture of learning within youth programme delivery, build organisational capacity for evidence-led improvement, and establish a common approach to understanding and improving impact.

It is a cohort-based programme, with the intention that organisations will engage in a deep and sustained mode of learning, sharing collective lessons, insights and good practice as they progress through the process. The programme takes place over four key phases: 

Explore

The common structure running through each of these phases is The Confidence Framework, which focuses on the organisational behaviours and processes that support the design, delivery, evaluation and improvement of high quality youth provision. The process takes organisations through an initial self-assessment, which generates a ‘heat-map’ of the team’s confidence across key aspects of evaluation and learning practice.

Calibrate

The participating team then gathers evidence as grounds for these confidence levels, which is ‘calibrated’, via a review from an external ‘coach’. This calibration is not a ‘pass/fail’ process: rather, it provides the organisation with a broader perspective, informed by external insight and expertise, and how others in the cohort have rated and evidenced their confidence levels.

Improve

The calibrated Confidence Framework then informs the production of a targeted improvement plan, which sets out specific objectives that the organisation is committed to achieving. This is undertaken with a combination of dedicated one-to-one support as well as peer review and support from other members of the cohort.

Review

The final phase sees the organisation return to The Confidence Framework, re-assessing themselves and reflecting on any changes they see. This also provides a backdrop for a final ‘improvement report’, which combines a retrospective review of the process, and identifies next steps for the organisation in its continuous quality improvement cycle. As a cohort, organisations are also actively encouraged to share insights, learning and examples of effective practice which others can apply to their own context.

​How can I get involved?

The Impact Accelerator is supported by the #iwill Fund, which is a £40 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
 
29 youth organisations are now part of the Impact Accelerator community. We launched the third cohort of organisations in August 2020. If you have any questions about the current or past cohorts, please get in touch with Catherine Mitchell, Project Manager - catherine.mitchell@youthimpact.uk.