How far we’ve come

Reflections on IA’s journey and the road ahead

Though exciting, the work of an independent consultant can be lonely. When I founded Impact Architects in 2017 as a solo researcher, I had the good fortune of working with smart and dedicated organizations day in and day out, but I was never truly a part of the teams.

Fast forward seven years, and Impact Architects is a mighty team of four. In early October, we had the opportunity to come together for a retreat in San Francisco’s magical Presidio. It was a nearly out of body experience for me to sit, hike, and share meals with my three intelligent, compassionate, funny colleagues, reflect on all we’ve accomplished together, and chart a path forward.

How far we’ve come

Over the past year we’ve had some big wins and I’m proud of both the quantity and quality of work we’ve put into the world.

1. IA Impact Tracker. After ten years working in the media impact space, an early dream of mine to make the former CIR Impact Tracker available to more newsrooms and mediamakers became a reality, and in early 2023, we launched the IA Impact Tracker as a Google-based platform that is freely available to anyone who wants to track and measure the real-world impact of their work. Since then, we’ve had more than 200 people and organizations access the tool and worked directly with more than a dozen organizations to create customized impact frameworks and Impact Trackers.
2. Inclusive Content Analysis. Taking what we learned through source diversity audits, we’ve evolved our practice to conduct inclusive content analyses, going deeper with newsrooms from The Washington Post to LAist to answer complex questions about the degree of inclusivity of their language, images, and framing. Our team and interns have pioneered this approach, coded thousands of stories and images, and generated insights with our newsroom partners so that they can continue to improve their coverage.
3. Supporting philanthropy. We’ve deepened our relationships with philanthropic partners to help inform their work through portfolio and strategy level evaluation and research-on-demand. The expansion of the Healthy News and Ecosystems framework to Knight’s resident communities, our ongoing multi-year evaluation with the Legal Clinic Fund for Local News, a strategic programming review with the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, and our ongoing work as the evaluation and learning partner with the MacArthur Foundation’s new local news big bet are examples of this work.

What we have planned

While we’ve had a busy year, we’re not slowing down. During our time together, we set some goals for 2024 that I’d like to put out in the universe.

1. Partnerships with journalism support organizations. In 2023, we’ve worked with journalism support organizations, like the Local and Independent News Association (LINA) in Australia and URL in the US, to build templatized impact frameworks for their members. Through these partnerships we’ve learned that network organizations have the unique ability to provide resources to their members, like template impact frameworks and impact trackers, and with cohort trainings, we are able to support multiple newsrooms to get up and running. Next year, we’re hoping to take what we’ve learned and work with more newsroom support organizations to create general impact frameworks, IA Impact Tracker templates, and ongoing support for their members. If that’s you (AJP, INN, LION, News Revenue Hub, API, and others), our team member Rosemary D’Amour is ready to talk!
2. ICA and computational text analysis. We’re proud of the approach to inclusive content analysis that we’ve developed, and we know that the model can be even more powerful if we integrate the power of computational text analysis together with analysis that truly requires humans. Our newest team member Abigail Chang is bringing her experience at the Middlebury Media Portrayals of Minorities Project lab to IA and developing a plan for us to try new things in the new year.
3. Connecting the dots in philanthropy. We’ve been fortunate to work with some of the largest and most thoughtful funders in the journalism space. Through this work, we’re often privy to the ways in which peers in the space are thinking similarly, as well as differently, about key questions and hypotheses. With the new attention on local news, we’re excited to take what we’re learning and connect dots to help catalyze the learning and strategy development of collaboratives, such as Press Forward. And our team member Eric Garcia McKinley continues to bring new evaluation methods to the table for us to implement in support of our partners.

“Shared joy is double joy” is as true at work as it is in the rest of life. Even more, shared work does not only lighten the load on any one person, it increases the quality and quantity of work, perhaps exponentially. I’m grateful for my team for trusting me with their time, energy, and careers. We’re grateful to our partners for their trust in us to contribute to and support their work. We’re looking forward to continuing to play our role pushing the field forward.