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Impact Audit

In 2009, IDS conducted an impact audit. The exercise, which drew on the principles of a social audit, has been key for the Institute to learn how well it is delivering the values that it aspires to and whether our performance is contributing to a more just world.

The audit had four objectives:

  • help us learn where and how IDS can be a better organisation
  • contribute to the development of the IDS strategy
  • promote trust and openness
  • build new relationships

We identified five stakeholder groups (staff, alumni, development practitioners and policy managers, development academics and donors) and designed the audit in a way that allowed these groups to own the process.

We did this by inviting small numbers of each cluster to brainstorm and develop questions that they thought others in their group would view as important for assessing IDS. Questionnaires were then developed especially for each group according to the feedback received, and 114 people responded.

General observations

Development practitioners acknowledged that is was difficult to get a clear sense of how much influence IDS and its partners are having with regional opinion leaders across the South. This raises important questions about sensitive ways to monitor evidence. While a minority of academics felt that IDS had only made a small contribution to the reduction of inequalities, other responses from the same group acknowledged the high quality of research and the engagement with policy and practice. Therefore, it would seem that this group in particular were reasonably cautious about how much we could expect to attribute complex social change to any single bit of research or intervention.

Finally, we are very aware that IDS, is a hybrid of institutional capacities and responds to a mixture of constituencies. For instance, while influencing policy was the top priority for research donors, it was rated as the lowest objective by academic peers. The challenge is to bring the creativity that we apply to our teaching and research to the management choices ahead. Much of these will be reflected in the IDS strategy of 2010-2015.

Results by group

IDS Social Audit Graph