What is Impact > Simplified?
I want to help people make sense of evaluative practice.
From getting you up and running, to supporting you as you go.
The aim is to:
simplify without dumbing down
bring clarity without losing rigour
make evaluation approachable, logical, and doable, no matter your background or experience.
Whether you're creating a Theory of Change, planning an evaluation, sharing what you’ve learned, or just trying to increase your confidence, Impact > Simplified is here to help, with plain language and practical tools you can actually use.
The goal is to support practitioners, managers, and organisations who aren’t evaluation specialists to design better programmes, learn from evidence, and tell clear stories about their impact.
Opportunities for direct training and coaching will be available soon. Everything here is built on key principles: keep it simple, accessible, and practical.
The views represented are my own and do not represent the position of my employer Nottingham Trent University.
Who is Impact > Simplified?
I’m Pete Crowson.
A researcher and evaluator with over a decade of experience in higher education, particularly in the widening participation sector. I’ve worked at Nottingham Trent University, TASO, Sheffield Hallam Students’ Union, and with a wide range of community organisations, charities, and schools to understand and strengthen the impact of their work.
Across these roles, I’ve learned two things:
1) The research and evaluation world has lots of brilliant and intelligent specialists doing great work
2) Non-specialists are often also expected to ‘do evaluation’ without clear guidance or knowing where to start
One of my strengths is taking complex ideas like Theory of Change, evaluation methods, programme design, and make them simple, clear, and understandable
Not watered down. Just accessible.
I’m driven by seeing how our society is unfair, and wanting that to change. But if we want to make society more fair, we need good programmes and a clear understanding of whether they work.
A good idea isn’t good enough. You need to also know: ‘does it actually work?’
Being evidence-led isn’t optional, it’s essential, if you want to help people and make society better. That’s what motivates my work and why Impact > Simplified exists.
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My positionality statement
Pete is a white-British man, growing up in Shropshire. This has provided Pete with power and privilege that he is keen to understand and unpick, however there likely remains an occasional blind spot. This is what Pete needs to learn more about, and has strived to do so, most recently by being an active member of an EDI working group within a large university.
Pete is educated to degree level in Psychology, following a traditional route through education and into a varied professional career spanning healthcare, finance, and most notably higher education (over the last decade). His research and evaluation perspective is born of a western view that values individualism, and empiricism.
From 2025, Pete became a father of a lovely little boy, and the dust is still settling on how this is shaping him.
What is a positionality statement? Read more here
Contact me
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and I’ll be in touch shortly.
I’m really excited to hear what you think