Impactfulness? A word?

Post written by guest blogger Mandie Abrams,
ECVO Workforce Strategy Manager.

Being just slightly older than a GenY’er, and after checking two online dictionaries, I still needed to consult a hard cover Merriam Webster Dictionary. I was looking for evidence that the term impactfulness was indeed a word. What did it mean, and could I use it properly in a sentence?

I came across impactfulness in an article about planning in the non profit sector. Word or not-word, it takes on importance when considered against sustainability of the non profit sector. The need to be able to show that non profit organizations, programs and services are having an impact is both a challenge and a necessity for success and survival in our current climate. Funding challenges, human resource shortages, and infrastructure deficiencies, pared with increasing demands for service delivery creates a challenge to the effective delivery of programs. How do nonprofit organizations adapt and evolve to
overcome these challenges and build stronger organizations and a stronger non profit sector?

In their book Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod conducted research on dozens of high-impact nonprofits and identified six practices that when applied lead to impactfulness. (thanks to socialedge.org for this great list!)

• Work with government and advocate for policy change—rather than shying away from lobbying or avoiding politics altogether.
  
• Harness market forces and see business as a powerful partner, rather than just dismissing capitalism as the root of all evil.
  
• Convert individual supporters into evangelists for their causes, and treat their volunteers and donors as far more than just sources of free labor or an occasional check.
  
• Build and nurture nonprofit networks, approaching other groups as allies rather than as competitors for resources.
  
• Adapt to the changing environment, and find ways to balance creativity and innovation with disciplined systems and structure that allows the organization to achieve maximum impact.
  
• Share leadership, empowering others to be forces for good, both within their organization and throughout their fields.
  
  Crutchfield and McLeod discovered that successful organizations must be able to sustain impact via
  
• attraction and retention of great people
• development of sustainable sources of funding
• investing in their infrastructure and capacity
  

Organizational culture and or capacity might resist the allocation of scarce resources - time, funds or information, to focus on activities not directly tied to mission fulfillment. But Crutchfield and McLeod’s research shows that doings so improves the sustainability & success of organizations that do.

Incidentally, according to Merriam and Webster impactfulness is not a word. BuzzWack defines impactfulness as, “... words created by folks who obviously felt that the word "impact" needed a little extra "oomph." Regardless, the concept is important to the evolution and sustainability of the nonprofit sector.

By the way, the original article I found also included the terms planful and solutioning. Hmmm, future blogs?

Nah, wouldn’t want to be e-dundant.