Impact Strategy
The bold shifts in the Mastercard Foundation’s strategy and operating model create new and exciting opportunities to make significant changes that improve the conditions, policies and incentives that accelerate opportunities for millions of young women and men.
Working together with other key players, the Foundation seeks to contribute to this impact through intentionally designed country strategies and program portfolios that catalyze medium and long-term sustained changes in:
- The knowledge, skills, attitudes and behavior — capacity and capability — of young women and men as they seek, create, and take up opportunities for dignified and fulfilling work, and the ripple effects on their families and communities.
- The institutions, social and economic systems and mindsets as they intentionally respond to youth-focused demand through policies practices and the allocation of resources.
To understand our contribution to these impacts, our Impact Strategy sets out a new approach to:
Advance a holistic approach to impact at all levels of the Foundation including our overall mission, strategies as well as at the program portfolio and program levels.
Elevate new approaches to understanding impact, and new ways of honouring Indigenous knowledge, evidence and insights to tell the story of the life journeys of young people.
Lead the transition beyond output-oriented measurement to an outcome- and impact-oriented approach at all levels of the Foundation, starting with a more expansive understanding of change at the base of the Foundation’s program investments.
Understanding the life journeys of young people is central to understanding impact
We will put the perspectives and life journeys of young women and men at the centre of our effort. Their narratives will guide us as we define and measure dignified and fulfilling work, make sense of monitoring and impact data, and guide country strategy and program investments. Together with young women and men, we will co-develop measures of dignified and fulfilling work and shape new ways to gather data and synthesize knowledge. Together with conventional data, these new approaches will help us form robust, inclusive impact narratives.
