Impact Up – Institute for Systemic Impact Orientation

We make space for
your Impact

For initiatives, organisations and networks,
that want to bring impact into the system

Impact Up wants to be a place for everyone who wants to move something in society through their work and their commitment. For these societal impacts to actually add up to a genuinely better society, we want to set out with you on these slow and hopefully beautiful process paths. So make yourself comfortable for a moment and have a look around.

We want to stand for systemic impact orientation and, in doing so, contribute to that genuinely better society. This calls for a lot of exchange with you: creating resonance, understanding many perspectives and making them intelligible, and involving, engaging and connecting many people. We're already looking forward to meeting you.

How an impact is articulated already has an effect – inward on everyone who belongs to the endeavour, and outward on everyone who reads, sees or hears it. It enters into relationship with other impacts. Far more hangs on an impact than one or two sentences can hold: inward, outward, into the field, into society. Around impacts, complex communication systems already exist within an organisation. In society, where impact is meant to take effect, these communication systems are many times more complex.

We at Impact Up strive for systemic impact. But an intended impact never stands alone in a society. What else is actually going on here? What does it have to do with me? What happens when many impacts interlock? What happens when we leave again? Long-term impact on society as a whole, carried together – coherent, in cooperation with others – is something like a provisional final point of reference. There are various approaches to how such shifts in the field succeed – Systems Change is one of them. But we work systemically, so of course we start with your concerns. Our way in remains a simple impact, right alongside the people and the projects – that is how paths toward this systemic impact open up. Of that we are convinced.

As an institute that works systemically, we naturally want to try out many things with many systems: how systemic work becomes more impact-oriented, and how impact orientation becomes more systemic. Systemic consulting on impact orientation, systemic organisational development – but gladly with impact orientation.

Perspectives on impact

For us, systemic impact orientation means reflecting on the impact from a range of relevant perspectives. Who looks at an impact, when, and for what reason? A single question makes the complexity of an impact obvious at once. A central element of communication at the edge of the system – from the inside, people work toward it; on the outside, people want to have it. Does the impact even fit on the inside? Are people motivated? Is the organisation functional? And on the outside? Usually people already look for evidence of the impact – but is it really wanted in just that form? Can the impact connect within society at all? What else does it need, and in what order? Resonance, Structure, Coherence and Cooperation are, for us, the core elements of good impact orientation. Together with you, we search for and open the spaces that make room and offer orientation.

01

inside · the person

Resonance

People are motivated and at ease with their work when they can identify with the impact they create and find their own sense of purpose in it. This resonance rarely arises on its own – and that is exactly where we come in. From it grows the orientation that carries good collaboration; meaning in one's own work emerges through the impact, and that is the most sustaining motivation there is. Whether a person can resonate at all also depends on how they are embedded in the project, the programme and the organisation – do they have the room and the freedom for it? Where resonance is missing, it lies sometimes in the impact itself, sometimes in this embedding – we look at that together with you, until the impact carries inward.

02

inside · the organisation

Structure

An organisation gives itself structure – through its purpose, through teams, projects and roles. This functionality is not an end in itself: it is what lets the formulated impact actually carry outward through the organisation. Does the impact fit the organisation's purpose? And is it anchored so that the organisation actually carries it outward? Between the impact in society and the organisation meant to achieve it lies an impact logic: what is needed one level down so that the two fit together precisely? We shape this interplay together with you – from aligning the structure with the impact to organisational development, where the structure itself still needs to mature.

03

outside · the field

Coherence

Your impact never stands on its own – as an organisation you act within a field, carried by your purpose, your mission, your wishes for change. Who works alongside you, who picks up next, where does power shift when you take a clear position? Two good impacts side by side are not automatically coherent. Together we look for the place of your impact in the field, so that it becomes complementary rather than working against others, and power imbalances aren't reinforced unintentionally. This lays the ground for everyone in the field to work in one direction – and for cooperation with others to become possible out of the field.

04

outside · society

Cooperation

In society, it is decided whether many individual impacts become a shared whole. Can society enter into cooperation on the basis of your impact – beyond single fields and actors? This is exactly where the lever lies: where competition shapes the interplay today, cooperation becomes the foundation – and thus the central element of a transformation of society. This needs someone to hold the space in which different logics, mandates and power relations find each other without flattening one another. We facilitate such spaces together with you – networked, power-aware, with the patience that relationships of substance demand. We work with what emerges: shared models, new practices, shifting resource flows. In this cooperation, the systemic impact we orient ourselves by comes into being.

Our offering…

01

your impact

clarify

You're starting something. Together we clarify the impact within your endeavour – and set it so that everyone sees the same direction.

Planning workshops · Project kick-off · Impact goals · Team clarity

02

your impact as an organisation

unfold

You already have an impact – now it should carry you. We unfold it across the organisation, until separate projects become an effective whole.

Organisational development · Team development · Impact logic · Programme design

03

your impact with others

connect

You want to move more together with others. We connect your impact to the field and to society, until many separate ones become a shared one.

Network facilitation · Cooperation · Field connection · Co-creation

…get in touch

Our impact fields

Impact Up – the Institute for Systemic Impact Orientation – wants to bring impact into the system itself. Approaches such as Systems Change, Systemic Consulting of Society or The Great Co-Creation show how we can improve the world together with systemic and co-creative methods – without trying to make it available or controllable. In this, Impact Up is also political, and places three concrete impact fields at the centre of its work: a starting point for systemic impact orientation as we would wish it; an invitation to connect; and, not least, the desire for self-efficacy.

Impulses among others from: Cynthia Rayner & François Bonnici, The Systems Work of Social Change (2021) · Ruth Seliger, Systemische Beratung der Gesellschaft (2022) · Jascha Rohr, Die große Kokreation (2023).

Ecosystem Earth

The Earth is an ecosystem with planetary boundaries that also limit economic growth and challenge justice on this planet in many layered ways. We begin the process of (re-)integrating human life harmoniously into the ecosystem Earth.

Peace & Nonviolence

Nonviolence is the foundation of human dignity and of peace between people. Structural and cultural nonviolence belongs to it too – often invisible, but essential. We begin the process of becoming more aware of violence in its various forms and of transforming conflicts constructively.

Social Participation

Social participation is the foundation of communal life. Everyone needs participation, an orientation toward the common good, and individual security – for example through a basic income. We begin the process of shaping it as the basis for democracy and cohesion, and putting humanity at the centre.

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About Us

This site is written in the "we", because Impact Up is an idea that can only emerge in community. That communal sense is part of Impact Up – the Institute for Systemic Impact Orientation – from the start. We launch the idea with this page and build Impact Up step by step together with you.

At the moment we are looking, alongside clients, just as much for process initiators whom we accompany with Impact Up – or the other way around. We often see the two as interchangeable. There is, for example, the Agency for Shaping the Future, which we accompany and which accompanies us; the Co-Creators Circle, where Impact Up takes part; and a larger process together with UBIE. Beyond that there are many further connections – for example with NANK (Neue Arbeit, Neue Kultur) or Kurve Wustrow – where a "we" of Impact Up can keep developing.

We call ourselves an institute because an institute is the term for where practice and theory may come together, with neither standing above the other. We are an institute for systemic impact orientation, also because we believe these two elements – "systemic" and "impact orientation" – fit together better than the world has so far brought them together. By now there are more and more approaches and authors that can be read in just this way, but we also want to try out new things – bringing theory into practice and practice into theory. In doing so we stay undogmatic and see ourselves directly as an organising actor within the system, not only as an institute that offers consulting services. We also want to build networks, look out in many directions, and ultimately take part and give your impact the space it needs.

That also means you are warmly welcome to get involved here. Get in touch and we'll see how you can become part of Impact Up – and/or Impact Up part of your ideas: info@impact-up.org.

Stefan Füsers

Stefan founded Impact Up, the Institute for Systemic Impact Orientation, in 2026. Until 2025 he spent six years as an advisor for planning, monitoring and evaluation (PME) in the Civil Peace Service (ZFD) of GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) in Cambodia. There he gathered hands-on experience in impact orientation with a Civil Peace Service programme, with international experts and eight very diverse partner organisations. The project impacts in peace work and dealing with the past were always part of a programme impact of the Civil Peace Service, but also part of the impact of the partner organisations themselves – an international tribunal, psychological service providers, memorial sites, youth movements and universities. Capacity development was often a core element, and the project impact quite often organisational development as well.

The whole programme was networked with other Civil Peace Service programmes in Cambodia, so impacts on the country as a whole were intended too; and not least there were many other GIZ Civil Peace Service PME advisors in other countries who regularly reflected together on the methods, the set-up and the way of working. In this way Stefan brought numerous actors in the field in Cambodia into resonance and strengthened a network of people active for peaceful coexistence. Methods from peace work itself, such as conflict transformation, were brought into these planning and reflection workshops again and again – just like his experience as a yoga teacher and from Nonviolent Communication.

Since returning to Germany, Stefan has been engaging very intensively with theories and methods for putting participation and co-creation into practice, with systemic approaches and a systemic stance. Numerous authors offer a space of reflection for the wealth of material from his years in Cambodia. Since December 2025 he has been deepening this in a training as a systemic organisational developer at WISPO. The literature on Systems Change and co-creation has created a lot of resonance. With Impact Up he now aims to carry the methods of planning, monitoring and reflecting, together with the methods of peace work – dialogue, conflict transformation, dealing with the past and trauma – into systemic work, and to develop approaches for systemic impact orientation towards changing society. Context-specific, with the empathy and sensitivity it takes to truly hear, see and feel what is at stake.

Thematically, Stefan brings broad prior experience: before the peace work in Kosovo and Cambodia, from economics and International Studies at university. Many years of change work with social-ecological movements, above all for basic income and degrowth, have shaped him as well. For the Climate Services Center in Hamburg he examined how the participation of practitioners in scientific processes can be appropriately taken into account in evaluations. In nearly all of his roles he has initiated and organised events, from small festivals through in-depth trainings to large conferences.

stefan@impact-up.org

References

"Mr. Füsers combined systemic process consulting, organizational development, and impact-oriented PME in a way that significantly enhanced the program's internal coherence and external relevance."

"His ability to bring together diverse actors, identify synergies, and facilitate constructive collaboration in a politically sensitive environment had a direct impact on the quality and sustainability of partner activities."

"Through partner-driven and joint learning processes, he promoted plural narratives, participatory approaches, and context-sensitive engagement in a field shaped by historical sensitivities and evolving political conditions."

GIZ, Civil Peace Service Cambodia · Letter of Reference, 2019-2025

"His very good conceptual and theoretical thinking was consistently grounded in practice. The congruence between the content he taught on constructive nonviolent conflict transformation and his own actions attests to his high integrity and consistently led to very good results."

Anja Petz, Executive Director, KURVE Wustrow · Letter of Reference, 2017-2018