You’re sitting at your desk, the NSF solicitation open in one tab, a half-empty broader impacts section in another. You’ve reread the merit review criteria three times. You’ve searched “NSF broader impacts examples” and found lists that somehow don’t quite fit your work.

Maybe you’ve talked to colleagues who shrug and say they just partner with a local school. Maybe you’ve inherited a template from someone who got funded, but their research is in a completely different area. Maybe your institution has workshops, but they conflict with your teaching schedule.

You know there are resources out there. You’ve heard of organizations like ARIS, programs like the Broader Impacts Design portal, museum networks, community partnerships, industry connections, economic development agencies. But you’re not plugged into those networks, and right now the deadline is approaching.

So you start listing activities. “The PI will mentor undergraduate students.” “The project will develop educational materials.” “Results will be disseminated at conferences.”

It’s not wrong. But something feels off.

Let me give you a concrete example of what shifts.

Many broader impacts plans involve mentorship in some form. A common approach: “Graduate students will mentor undergraduates who will work on aspects of the research project.”

That’s fine. But it’s a list item, not a story.

Now think about it as story. You learn differently when you have to teach. What if you structured a layered mentorship model where senior graduate students mentor newer ones, and together they work with undergraduates? What if that mentorship isn’t just about the research but about understanding how research connects to society?

You can connect this to existing institutional programs for mentorship support. You can link to regional or national networks that have developed mentorship structures over years, many funded by NSF, where you can learn from their models and connect your students to broader communities.

Now extend further. What if this mentorship structure eventually connects to high school programs, or science festivals, or industry visits? What if the culture you’re building in your lab becomes the seed for how your students approach broader impacts in their own careers?

This is story thinking. One element transforms into another. The activities aren’t isolated, they’re connected by purpose. And the purpose connects to who you are as a researcher and what you actually care about.

Here’s one question to sit with before your next broader impacts draft:

What’s already happening in your lab or your work that you’d want to optimize, extend, or transform?

Don’t start by imagining something completely new. Start by looking at what exists. The conversations you’re already having. The informal mentoring that happens naturally. The presentations your students give that someone else might benefit from seeing. The connections to industry or community that you’ve touched but never formalized.

Broader impacts don’t have to be invented from nothing. Often the most compelling plans take something real and ask: how could this be different? How could it reach further? How could it transform not just this project but the next one?

Before you open Issue 2, do this: Write down three sentences about one partnership story — any partnership, any scale. Something that already happened. You’ll use it in the next exercise. It takes 90 seconds. If you can’t think of one, that’s diagnostic too — and exactly what the rest of this guide helps you with.

If you’re working through this with a cohort or team:

Someone at your institution helps faculty with broader impacts. They might be called a research development officer, broader impacts coordinator, community engagement specialist, or something else entirely. They might sit in the research office, the provost’s office, a STEM center, or an extension program.

Find them. Ask them:

Be straightforward. Let them know you’re trying to understand societal impact work across campus, sparked by a grant opportunity. Ask about their experiences, how they got involved, who they’re networked with, what the realities and logistics look like.

You can also search the NSF award database by your institution to see what’s been funded. Look at the broader impacts in those projects. Find the PIs and ask how they developed their approach.

The point is: you don’t have to figure this out alone. The journey is easier together.

This is Issue 1 of Story Stacks, a Team Guide about developing your broader impacts through story.

Here’s what I’ve learned: the shift from list to story is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out who the characters are in your story. Not the obvious ones — your students, your collaborators. The ones you’ve been overlooking. A community partner you’ve talked to three times but never formalized. An industry contact who keeps asking how your research applies to their sector. The campus office you didn’t know existed.

That’s Issue 2: The partners already in your orbit (that you haven’t talked to yet). It’s the skill that makes everything else click — and it’s the one most faculty skip because they don’t realize those people are already in their orbit.

The full Team Guide is eight issues, each building on the last: from finding your characters, to mapping your impact identity, to structuring the narrative, to telling it in different rooms. It includes slide decks for team meetings, worksheets, and interactive tools.

But the next step is the characters. That’s where your story gets real.

If you remember nothing else from this issue:

There are people and resources that can make this journey easier. The purpose of Story Stacks is to help you see how your research connects to society and to support you in designing those connections well.

Some faculty win CAREER Awards. Some don’t, but still develop amazing societal impact plans that they carry forward. Either way, thinking about how your lab extends its connections to entrepreneurship, industry, community, policy, education, or anywhere else science meets society is valuable work.

Your broader impacts plan isn’t a checklist. It’s a story about who you are and what you’re building. Let’s figure out how to tell it.

Story Stacks is part of the STEMsaic Team Guide Collection.

Your institution’s research development office and broader impacts professionals are your best local resources. The frameworks here come alive when you apply them with people who know your context.

Your STEM mosaic, your way! STEMsaic Research Impacts