Climate progress rarely happens in a straight line.

A major policy shift, a fossil fuel project stopped, a change in public opinion or new investment in climate solutions can look like a single breakthrough. In reality, it is usually the result of years of work by many people and organisations – research, organising, legal action, storytelling and public pressure building on each other over time.

That makes impact both incredibly important to understand and difficult to neatly measure.

At Groundswell, we want to know what changed, whether a strategy worked and whether our funding helped. But we also take impact seriously enough not to pretend it is simple.

Big change rarely belongs to one organisation, one campaign or one grant. What looks like a sudden win is often the point at which many different efforts finally come together and something that once seemed unlikely becomes possible.

That is the nature of systems change. And it shapes how we think about impact at Groundswell.
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We look for contribution, not ownership

One organisation might produce the research that changes the debate. Another builds community power. Another brings a legal challenge. Another shifts the public story.

Each is working at a different pressure point, but their efforts can reinforce one another and build towards the same outcome.

That’s why Groundswell takes an ecosystem approach to funding. We deliberately back different organisations, strategies and forms of power because lasting change usually requires several things to move at once – public opinion, political pressure, community leadership, law, money and cultural change.

We look at what each organisation contributes, what its work unlocks for others, and how progress in one part of the movement strengthens the whole.

Because in systems change, impact is rarely isolated. It accumulates, connects and compounds.
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Sometimes impact looks like nothing happening at all

Some results are easy to point to – a policy changed, government funding secured, a new legal precedent set.

But sometimes the result is an absence – a gas project that never gets built, a bad policy that disappears before it reaches Parliament, investment that never makes it to a destructive project.

It can look like nothing happened. But in reality, that ‘nothing’ may be the result of years of organising, research, legal work and public pressure.

Prevented harm is particularly difficult to measure because there is no dramatic before-and-after. The damage simply didn’t occur.

And beneath both the visible wins and the avoided losses is another layer of impact – stronger organisations, deeper relationships, new leaders, more community power and a movement better prepared for the next opportunity.
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That doesn’t mean we stop measuring

Complexity isn’t an excuse for vagueness.

We track where money goes and what happens next. We look at policy and legal outcomes, changes in public sentiment, political commitments and funding moving towards climate solutions.

Depending on the work, we might also look at people engaged, audiences reached, organisational growth or investment unlocked.

But we combine numbers with something equally important – stories, case studies, feedback from grantees and patterns across the organisations we support.

And we don’t impose the same metrics on every grant simply because they are convenient to collect.

Climate organisations are already operating with limited resources in fast-moving environments. We don’t want them spending valuable time turning complicated social change into tidy numbers for our benefit.

So we ask ourselves a simple question: will collecting this information help us learn, be accountable or make a better decision?

If it won’t, we probably don’t need it.
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We care about what happens next

Ultimately, the impact we’re most interested in is bigger than any individual grant.

We want a stronger, better-resourced climate movement. More First Nations and frontline leadership. Greater public support for ambitious action. More people giving to climate work. Governments and businesses making decisions that once seemed politically impossible.

Groundswell will never be able to claim those changes as ours alone. And that’s the point.

Our job is to pay attention to the evidence, listen to the people doing the work, look for patterns and keep asking whether our funding is helping create the conditions for more change.

Sometimes that change will be obvious, sometimes it will take years, and sometimes the clearest sign of success will be the damaging thing that never happened.

Ultimately, the purpose of measuring impact isn’t to prove that every grant worked – it's to help us make better decisions about what to back next.