Last week, the entire Kindling team gathered for a two-day kick-off session for a new project we’re working on. (Stay tuned for details…) A major goal for the meetings was to lay the groundwork for the project’s impact campaign. Here are a few questions we asked at the outset:

What are our impact goals?
Who do we want to reach? 
Who can we partner with? 
How will we measure change? 

Consulting with us on this project are Micael Bogar, a doc film impact expert who has worked with Active Voice and the Hartley Film Foundation, among others, and Jennifer MacArthur, a multi-platform media strategist with a focus on documentary. Jennifer was part of BritDoc’s Impact Lab in 2014, which developed a new Impact Field Guide for doc filmmakers. Together, we talked through some of the resources in the Field Guide and how to apply them to our new project. 

This project is unique for KG because it is not built around a feature-length doc. Instead, we’ll be releasing stories and engaging the public primarily via web and social media platforms. One of our big goals is to influence a national conversation, and one of our challenges will be to figure out how to articulate the “baseline” — and how to develop metrics for tracking our impact on a cultural shift. Doc films are often part of what we later understand as “cultural moments,” so that’s nothing new, but determining which strains of collective conversation and action get our finger on the pulse to measure impact is new for every project. This is where the Impact Field Guide had some especially cool new resources for tricky metrics. For example:

Some of these tools are still new, so we’ll have to see how well they work in practice. We’d love to hear your feedback on any projects you’ve used them for in the comments section below!

In the meantime, check out the Impact Field Guide if you haven’t already. The tools mentioned above don’t even scratch the surface of this toolbox.

Enjoy!