Impact Venture Canvas: a strategy tool for impact-driven teams
www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/impact-venture-canvas-a-strategy-tool-for-impact-driven-teams/
www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/impact-venture-canvas-a-strategy-tool-for-impact-driven-teams/
When evaluating an idea for a new impact-driven product, service, or intervention, it is best to ‘road-test’ the idea on paper within your team first. Capturing an idea on paper or ‘canvas’ allows you to catch problems early on, gather feedback from your team, and ensure the idea makes sense before investing time or money into it.
While various 'mission' and 'social' canvases exist that can support this evaluation, the Impact Venture Canvas (IVC) is specifically designed to assist impact-driven teams. Released in 2016, the canvas has been widely used by impact entrepreneurs, investors, charities, and NGOs as a strategic planning tool to capture how teams will:
The strength of any canvas is in the conversations, collaboration, and cohesion it facilitates among the team, not in the template alone.
Instead of functioning as a static business plan, the IVC is a dynamic, ‘living’ document that stimulates discussion and enables teams to capture ‘what the team knows now’ across four key dimensions: desirability, feasibility, impactability and viability. Each dimension exists as a 'living element' of the solution, continually shaped by new insights and ongoing discussions about how the solution:
In the following section, we explore the key components of the Impact Venture Canvas and how they help teams shape a sustainable, impactful venture.
At the top of the canvas, the purpose and mission sections define the venture’s vision and strategic direction:
The desirability section assesses the need for the solution through four key areas:
Who we assist: This section defines the audience by addressing:
Solution: Teams describe how their offering addresses these problems and highlight any unfair advantage that sets them apart.
Value proposition: This section clarifies the unique value the solution provides to customers or funders and what differentiates it from alternatives.
Channels and delivery: Teams outline how they will communicate with and engage customers and funders. They also consider external influences that may affect decision-making.
The feasibility section ensures the venture has the necessary resources and partnerships to operate effectively.
Key activities: This section captures the essential actions required to develop, test, and implement the solution.
Key resources and partners: Teams identify the critical assets – human, intellectual, technical, or financial – needed for success. They also consider strategic partnerships essential for implementation and scaling.
Unique to this canvas is the impactability section that captures the solution's potential to create meaningful, measurable, and scalable impact while mitigating harm.
Impact and effects: Teams answer: How will we know if our solution is making a positive impact? This section allows them to define an impact measurement framework, such as a theory of change or logic model, and track key indicators of progress.
Unintended consequences: This section encourages teams to anticipate unexpected effects – both positive and negative. By identifying risks and additional benefits early, they can refine their approach to maximise impact while mitigating harm.
Positioned at the bottom of the canvas, the viability section ensures financial sustainability.
Consisting of two areas that assist users in determining whether the solution has financial viability and, therefore, is capable of delivering and sustaining its impact over the intended timeframe—be it months, years, decades, or generations.
Revenue and funding: This section outlines how the venture will be funded, whether through earned income, grants, or investments. A clear plan helps sustain the organisation’s mission over time.
Cost structure: Teams define their primary operating expenses, including fixed and variable costs, to understand the financial needs of delivering and maintaining their solution.
At Nesta, we have used the Impact Venture Canvas to identify key assumptions across each dimension, then designed and conducted experiments through a process we call speed testing. We take an iterative approach to our mission work, where we:
At each stage of this process, the scope of work may expand or shift focus, but this core approach remains consistent. To learn more, explore our feature on speed testing, where we tested ideas that could speed up the switch to greener home heating.
We partnered with Early Ideas Limited, using their story creation app TANDEM to see whether using generative AI at home would encourage shared reading among families with children under five from lower-income households.
We used a previous version of the Impact Venture Canvas (v3.0) throughout the project to continuously revisit and assess:
The screen recording below details the life cycle of the Impact Venture Canvas, from Below is the first iteration of the Impact Venture Canvas, which was developed at the beginning of the project to the project’s midpoint in May 2024 and endpoint in July 2024.
Working closely with the CEO and CTO of TANDEM, we captured and highlighted areas in orange for low confidence/evidence and areas in green for stronger confidence levels from our interdisciplinary team. Then we used the canvas to prioritise our critical assumptions and designed experiments to test them and address the project's research goals.
Impact Venture Canvas walkthrough
This innovation partnership between Nesta and TANDEM concluded in September 2024. Following the project’s completion, Early Ideas Limited secured investment from impact investor Bethnal Green Ventures in October 2024 to further develop the TANDEM app and its capabilities. They now have two Impact Venture Canvases in progress as they explore and test alternative impact venture models to determine which would be the best fit.
Although TANDEMs journey is ongoing, its founders attest that the Impact Venture Canvas has been invaluable. They highlight how it helped them to be crystal-clear about their assumptions, rapidly test them, and adapt as needed.
Rob Hughes, CEO and co-founder of TANDEM said: “Using the Impact Venture Canvas has been a great way to organise our thinking, and to really force ourselves to be clear on the assumptions we’re making; it’s been great to treat the IVC as a living document that’s evolved over time. As we’ve learnt more about the different customers and users we want to reach, we’ve been able to update our analysis and strategy. Through this, we’ve identified multiple new ways to get TANDEM into the hands of children who we think can benefit from it.”
Alastair van Heerden, CTO and co-founder of TANDEM said: “Working with Nesta using the Impact Venture Canvas has been an incredibly informative experience. With so many moving parts in building an impact venture, the canvas helped me organise my thinking and provided a critical framework for integrating rapid feedback into our development process. I particularly appreciated the structured approach to identifying assumptions and systematically validating them through experiments, interviews, and data. This agile approach has been instrumental in refining our solutions, ensuring they meet real-world needs efficiently and effectively.”
To explore more about whether generative AI promotes shared family reading, check out our five-part blog series detailing our research process, interviews, tests, and insights that shaped the TANDEM canvases.
We are also using the Impact Venture Canvas in other Nesta projects, including:
Whether you are an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur within a larger organisation, the Impact Venture Canvas and speed testing can help you develop and test your ideas. Download and start drafting your Impact Venture Canvas today.
If you want to learn more about the canvas, provide feedback, or suggest improvements, please email Umesh Pandya.
