Turning Complex Program Evidence into Stories of Impact

The Challenge

NORCAP assigns specialist experts to humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding partners around the world. These experts frequently work within complex partnerships, contributing to changes that unfold over several years and involve governments, United Nations agencies, donors, civil society organizations, and local communities.

The challenge was to clearly demonstrate NORCAP’s contribution without oversimplifying how change occurred or attributing collective achievements to a single organization.

Evidence was distributed across technical reports, program documents, and the experiences of people involved in each assignment. GPS needed to bring these different sources together, distinguish activities from meaningful results, and create stories that were both compelling and defensible.

The publications also needed to serve several purposes: demonstrating impact to donors, preserving organizational learning, and providing NORCAP with strong evidence for future communications and advocacy.

The Approach

GPS led each four-month project from initial concept to final delivery.

Story selection was undertaken in collaboration with NORCAP to identify assignments that could illustrate different dimensions of the organization’s impact. GPS then reviewed extensive background documentation to understand each program, its operating environment, and the evidence already available.

We developed a tailored interview framework and conducted approximately 10-15 remote interviews for each publication. Participants included NORCAP experts and stakeholders with direct knowledge of the assignments and the changes they helped produce.

Each story was then developed around a consistent narrative: context, intervention, evidence of impact, enabling factors, remaining challenges and lessons for future programming. Individual experiences brought the work to life, while careful analysis kept the stories grounded in evidence.

Drafts were reviewed by NORCAP, its partners, and the experts involved. GPS consolidated and incorporated their feedback, refined the narratives, and designed the final publications in accordance with NORCAP’s visual identity.

What the Project Delivered

The two commissions produced:

• Supporting Locally-Led Responses in the Lake Chad Region, a 34-page publication containing eight stories from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria

• Strengthening Systems for Education, a 27-page publication containing five case studies examining NORCAP experts’ contributions within Jordan’s Ministry of Education

• Approximately 20-30 original stakeholder interviews across the two assignments

• Clear accounts of outcomes spanning localization, gender equality, humanitarian leadership, education, institutional capacity and evidence-based decision-making

• Executive summaries, consolidated findings and practical recommendations

• Two fully researched, written, edited, reviewed and professionally designed publications

• A complete editorial and creative process managed by GPS from concept through delivery

The Results

Each publication was completed within four months, giving NORCAP a polished, evidence-based resource through which to communicate its contribution to donors and other key partners.

Rather than presenting lists of activities, the publications connected individual expert assignments with wider institutional and systemic changes. They demonstrated what NORCAP’s model of embedded expertise could achieve while recognizing the governments, international partners, local organizations and individuals that contributed to those results.

The reports also captured knowledge that had previously been dispersed across documents, programs and individual experiences, preserving both achievements and lessons.

The Insight

Powerful impact storytelling depends on more than finding an inspiring example. It requires rigorous research, interviews and careful judgment about what the evidence can genuinely support.

Background documents provide the foundation. Stakeholder voices reveal how change was experienced. Strong editorial direction connects the two, transforming complex program evidence into stories that are both credible and readable.

Make Your Impact Visible

GPS helps mission-driven organizations identify, document, and communicate the impact of their work. From individual success stories to multi-country case-studies, we manage the complete process: from the research and interviews to writing, editing, and design. We create content that strengthens donor engagement, captures organizational learning, and supports advocacy.

Discuss your impact with us!