Building and Communicating the Impact Story

An impact story brings together the change a program seeks, the results over time and the experiences of the people involved. It explains what donated products and partnerships contributed, what helped the result and where further work could make a difference. Start with your program’s purpose and the outcomes that matter to your organization and partners.

Delivery and reach figures describe the scale of your work. Outcome measures help you understand what changed or was sustained. Measure the same outcome across comparable periods so you can see progress, maintenance, decline or differences between settings. Even availability becomes a fuller story when you track how closely supply meets priority demand over time.

AMI offers three shared impact areas: Increase Availability of Priority Products; Sustain Continuity of Care; and Expand Capacity to Deliver Care. Use the relevant metric cards alongside other defined outcomes that reflect your program. Each story can connect with the areas that fit its purpose.

Keep definitions, units, locations and period lengths comparable. Show the starting and later values alongside the change. A first observation establishes a baseline for the next review. Track meaningful maintenance as well as improvement, with context about demand and operating conditions.

Patients, caregivers, providers, supply teams and local partners can explain how the program worked in practice. Their experiences may reveal a change the metric misses, explain a pattern or lead you to reconsider an initial conclusion. Include perspectives from people with different experiences. Tool 4 provides the working questions, recording sheets and detailed guidance.

Review the records and stories together. Be clear about what was measured, what people described and what you conclude. Check the assumptions behind the comparison, including complete records, consistent definitions, other sources of supply and whose experiences are represented. Record what has been checked and what still needs investigation.

Connect the findings to the outcome your program seeks. For example, stock records show product availability; provider and patient accounts help explain the experience of obtaining refills. Each adds a different part of the story. Credit local leadership, donated products and the other support that shaped the result.

Decide who will use the findings and what they need to understand. A program report may explain progress against outcomes; a partner discussion may focus on what to change; a leadership brief may support a resource decision; a public story may describe a person’s experience alongside the wider result. Keep the underlying finding and its scope consistent across formats.

Agree the audience, timing, roles, requested content and review process early. Build on existing reporting arrangements and discuss the staff time, translation, collection and other costs with partners. Shared planning helps each organization use the same information well.

Explain the purpose and intended uses, protect voluntary participation and record permissions for recording, quotations and images. Give contributors an opportunity to review their representation. Show people’s knowledge, choices and agency; recognize local leadership and the partners involved. Protect personal information, check translations and follow local consent and safeguarding procedures. Return the finished story or findings to contributors in an accessible form.

Tool 3 is a review of the purpose, measures and partner decisions developed through the earlier tools. It brings the findings into a report or story. Tool 4 supports gathering and checking experiences, with a separate AMI Storytelling Reference Guide for detailed methods and examples. Together, they help you identify what to sustain, what to adjust and what further support could help the program achieve its intended outcomes.