Cooperate

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 moves something in society through their work and their commitment. We believe a better society grows from many impacts finding their way to each other. The paths there are slow, and they are allowed to be beautiful – we walk them together with you. 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 takes effect, these communication systems are many times more complex. This complexity cannot be controlled – but it can be worked with well: in dialogue, with principles and ideas whose effects we observe together.

We at Impact Up fundamentally strive for systemic impact. For 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 – and we don't want to commit to just one. 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 slowly 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.

Impact Orientation

Impact orientation is a term many organisations and funders have long been using – we want to fill it in our own way. For us, impact sits at the boundary of the organisation: inside, the people in the organisation work towards the impact; outside, it acts through the impact field, together with others, on society. From this inside and outside arise four perspectives that together make up the quality of impact orientation. We begin by making them conscious – only then does a common ground for exchange and further development emerge, and building on that, plenty of room for your impact.

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 perspectives of good impact orientation. Together with you, we search for and open the spaces that make room and offer orientation.

inside · the person

Resonance

People are motivated and enjoy their work when they can identify with the impact they create and find their own sense of purpose in it. Yet such positive resonance with one's own impact is by no means a given – and that is exactly where we come in. When it succeeds, an orientation emerges that also enables 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 also works inward through meaning.

inside · the organisation

Structure

An organisation gives itself structure – through its purpose, through teams, in projects or roles. This functionality is not an end in itself: it is the precondition for the impact to actually be produced outward through the organisation. Does the impact fit the organisation's purpose? And is it anchored so that the organisation actually brings it outward? The impact logic always lies at the boundary between organisation and society: what exactly is needed inside the organisation so that the desired impact can be produced? We shape this interplay together with you – from aligning the structure with the impact to organisational development, where much has to be structured and agreed upon for the impact.

outside · the impact field

Coherence

Your impact never stands on its own – as an organisation you act within an impact 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 neither automatically coherent (soundly related to one another) nor complementary (adding to one another). Together we look for the path of your impact through the impact field, thinking coherence and complementarity with others in from the start. In larger endeavours it is worth agreeing things directly with other impact actors – and often that grows into a lasting process well worth the effort. This lays the ground for many actors in the impact field to genuinely move something together – and out of that, further cooperations grow that make even more possible.

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.

Central Impact Fields

Impact Up wants to anchor a good practice of impact orientation above all in central impact fields of society. That is where our goals lie, and we know the importance of impact. For us, the central impact fields are the ecosystem Earth, peace and non-violence, social participation and democracy.

Approaches such as Systems Change, Systemic Consulting of Society or The Great Co-Creation show how systemic and co-creative methods let us work on the world together – without trying to make it controllable. None of the four fields can become sustainably good unless the other three become similarly good; the real value emerges where they are connected. In the fields, we make the perspectives of organisations, fields and society conscious – and through that, exchange is initiated, shaped and carried on.

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 – across everything that is organised economically today: food, housing, mobility, culture. Everyone needs participation, an orientation toward the common good, and individual security – for example through a basic income. We begin the process of shaping the economy as an instrument of social participation, and putting humanity at the centre.

Democracy

Democracy lives on dialogue, participation and shared decision-making – in organisations as much as in whole societies. Methods such as Systemic Consensing and the use of digital developments open up new ways to make decisions together, even better. We begin the process of involving more people effectively in good decisions.

All four complement one another through mutual support and synergies. A further goal of Impact Up is to connect these impact fields with each other, so that cooperation keeps gaining ground in society and at some point becomes "normal".

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About Us

Impact Up is an idea that can only come into being in community – which is why this website is written in the "we". As an institute for systemic impact orientation, we see ourselves as an organising actor: we bring together people, organisations and networks working on societal impact, help build alliances, and keep connections open. In this we look for process initiators as much as for clients – the two are often interchangeable: we accompany and are accompanied.

Already today these include the Alliance 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 NWNC (New Work, New Culture) or Kurve Wustrow – where a "we" of Impact Up can keep developing. Write to us if the we should keep developing with you.

Stefan founded Impact Up as an institute in 2026. 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 far beyond consulting as an organising actor and a source of impulse within the system. We want to build networks and connect them. We want to look out in many directions, take part, and give your impact the space it needs.

Write to us: your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

info@impact-up.org

Feel free to keep looking around, or come into conversation with us.

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