Impact Roadmap for Founders

A roadmap for your startup's impact

If you've ever thought “where do I start with impact?”, you're not alone.

We at Giant Leap have wrestled with the big questions like “what's our impact mission?”, “how do we measure impact?”, and “how do we deepen impact?” for both ourselves and our founders, so we know it can feel a little overwhelming with all of the resources out there.

To help, we created this Impact Roadmap for Founders. It's a walkthrough of our key questions and recommended resources for how to think about impact, and suggested steps you could take to define, measure and deepen your impact.

The roadmap is a simple guide for startups and it is important to note that there is no single right answer as to how you approach impact as it is subjective and its meaning differs from person to person. However, wherever you are on your impact journey, we hope there is something useful in here for you.

Check out the Impact Roadmap for Founders below 👇

Waypoints on the roadmap

The roadmap is broken down into two key sections, your impact mission (defining what your impact is) and your impact operations (defining how your business does it).

Impact mission

In this section, we guide you through defining your impact mission and articulating your Theory of Change. In short, a Theory of Change is a comprehensive hypothesis for how you will create change. 

Much like business strategy, a Theory of Change involves:

1. A “north star” (or mission) describing what you are trying to achieve
2. A logic model (i.e. this plus this equals that) for how you expect to achieve your north star through activities you can control
3. Metrics to measure your units of progress towards success 

You can find more information about developing your Theory of Change in our Starter Guide to Theory of Change.

Impact operations

In this section, we use the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) framework to help you ensure your operations align with your values and the impact that you want to achieve. From the sustainability of your supply chain to your parental leave policy to the makeup of your board, all of these decisions have flow on effects to your employees, customers, your organisation and the broader context in which you operate.

Key questions:

• Environment: What are your sustainability goals and what policies will need to be in place to support this?
• Social: What are your social goals and what policies will need to be in place to support this?
• Governance: How will you ensure that all stakeholders and impact risks are considered in operations? 

For each area, consider the key questions and then:

• Define your goals on the various dimensions of environment, social, and governance (e.g. your carbon footprint)
• Build an action plan to achieve your goals
• Implement policies and initiatives
• Track progress towards goals

B Lab provides a comprehensive certification across all three areas of ESG, known as B Corp certification. B Corps are businesses that meet high standards of performance across five areas: workers, customers, governance, environment and community. 

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This is a simple guide to developing your impact roadmap and we highly recommend leaning into resources shared within the guide to dig deeper.

If you would like to invest with us in Fund II, check out our investor page.

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