After 20 years its time to report less impact

I've always been an advocate of social impact reporting, ever since I first stumbled across its concepts in the 1990s.

This has meant that over the last 3 decades I've helped to develop and pilot new national reporting frameworks and toolkits, deliver masterclasses for enterprises and commissioners, and be invited to share my ideas and thinking with national conferences. It's also seen me develop a framework for reporting my own business' impact, the latest of which marks 20 years of this commitment.

And for anyone who's followed my self-reporting journey, you'll be aware that what it convers has expanded over the years - from 2 numbers and a sentence on a webpage in 2006 to a 37 page report in 2025, that's been commended by the Institute of Social Value, and Social Value International.

But this year, as well as it trying to consider the full and total scope of my impact over a 20-year period, it's also the start of my deliberately starting to make it smaller (not just in page count, but also in what I'm considering in it).

Using a milestone year as an excuse to pause and reflect

Last year was the 20th anniversary of my business' startup, and I made a decision that year to try and start taking it more seriously (on the basis that over 90% of start ups don't make it this far, and my working in ways that seem to run counter to accepted wisdom for most of this time; I also never meant to become self-employed to begin!).

And with my impact report being a key tool through which I reflect on my business model, activities, and ways of working, it's 20th anniversary is also a timely point to do some serious navel gazing too.

Changing needs and pressures

As some will know, as well as being self-employed (one of the worst things you can apparently do for your mental and financial wellbeing based on various studies), I'm also an unpaid carer for several immediate family members (also one of the worst things you can do for your mental, physical, and financial health, based on other studies).

This means that over the last few years I've had to start to uncouple myself from communities and working practices I've helped to grow and support, to try and best re-mix the need to keep earning to cover the rent (as it increases each year) with honouring my caring responsibilities (which keep changing over time). I'm increasingly having to make hard choices about what I invest not only my time, but also energy, in as a person and business - and if I can't clearly identify that it has a good chance of making a return (income) in the next 3-6 months, then regrettably I'm having to step away for the time being.

This isn't a choice that I like, nor want to make - but I also know it's one that many others in similar circumstances to me are also being forced to make, based on my occasional efforts to speak out/up for the hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers who are also self employed.

Becoming less social?

But to come back to the focus of this post - I've decide to remove the considerations I used to include for how what i did across different social media channels, have been contributing to wider impacts amongst people who engaged with them.

This isn't because I've fallen out of love with social media - but rather that I've realised that when I started to create my profiles across it 15 years ago, and then built habits around these, none of what I've done there has ever related to my being awarded contracts or generating new leads. Which brings me back to my earlier point about having to increasingly cut back on things that aren't directly helping me to pay the rent or support family members.

I'm not quitting these spaces altogether; but I am deliberately stepping back from many of the habits I'd built up in how I use and participate in them. And as this means less social media activity, then it seems only right that my wider reporting reflect this by not continuing to include consideration for something I'm not being deliberate about?

I may be back, but am still here now.

As with everything I try out, I'll be returning to revisit the decision to try this experiment in next years' annual impact report - but for now, I can still be reached through all the usual channels.

But please go check out this years' latest impact report (which includes a dedicated section on what 20 years of impact looks like), and let me know what you make of it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JcCFirEsoGTWA3CtdkICxValzJtiLpbK/view?usp=drive_link