A Brief Overview of Broader Impacts

Broader Impacts (BI) are frequently thought of as education, outreach, or broadening participation. Those are legitimate and valuable BI activities. But BI can also be reflected in the inherent value of the research itself. Further, while BI is most closely associated with the National Science Foundation (NSF), all grant proposals need to answer the question of why the project matters. WSU’s land-grant mission is a good place to begin thinking about that. How do research, scholarship, and creative activities done at the university benefit the state of Washington and its citizens?

The NSF website includes a page devoted to BI, as well as Five Tips for Your Broader Impacts Statement. Be sure to also review NSF’s 2025 update on priorities.

NSF identifies eight examples of possible societal outcomes for a project, which is not an exclusive list. Investigators are free to be creative in their BI activities or approaches.

The NSF categories are:

STEM education – Improving education and educator development — at any level — in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Public engagement – Increasing public scientific literacy and public engagement with STEM.
Societal well-being – Improving the well-being of individuals in society.
STEM workforce – Developing a more diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce.
Partnerships – Building partnerships between academia, industry and others.
National security – Improving national security.
Economic competitiveness – Increasing the economic competitiveness of the U.S.
Infrastructure – Enhancing infrastructure for research and education.

Three of the outcomes – STEM education, public engagement, and STEM workforce development – encompass outreach activities commonly thought of as broadening participation. These activities are legitimate pursuits and must not be restricted to any particular group of applicants. Best practice for such outreach projects is to unambiguously state that the activity is open to all qualified applicants. Note that BI-related costs are allowable and allocable in NSF proposal budgets.

The remaining outcomes – societal well-being, partnerships, national security, economic competitiveness, and infrastructure – are related to the inherent value of the project. A broader impacts statement can focus on that factor alone. Consider why the general public should care about the work being proposed. What problem might it solve that will improve something for a family, a community, a business, or the country? Further, federal grants come from taxpayer dollars. Consider why those taxpayers should care about the advancements you are making. What do they need know? How would you explain the project’s significance to them?

Additional resources:

The NSF-supported organization, Advancing Research Impact in Society is devoted to furthering broader impacts in all aspects and levels. Their website hosts a Broader Impacts Toolkit, which includes Guiding Principles, Planning Checklist, BI Wizard, and BI Project Rubric.
WSU Office of Research has a page about Broader Impacts.
Webpages at Georgia Institute of Technology and Cornell University have sample BI Statements and Activities.

Some Ideas:

Outreach/Educational Activities: Many BI plans have traditionally focused on education activities, ranging from K-12 outreach to a variety of public programming for adults. There are a variety of ways to bring your research to various groups:

Develop summer workshops or internships – for K-12, undergraduates, graduate students, or teachers
Collaborate with regional schools, community colleges, museums, or other institutions to create programming
Create training guidelines related to your research
Design a new course or integrate the research into an existing course
Produce podcasts or videos to communicate science
Design citizen science projects
Develop online tutorials

Other ideas:

Through the inherent value of the research, BI can contribute in any number of ways. Some activities or ideas to focus on might be to:

Integrate new research into existing curriculum
Develop policy briefs
Develop open-source software or datasets
Host professional development workshops
Organize working groups
Support workforce development for the next generation of researchers, professionals, or leaders
Develop tutorials or reproducible code
Enhance institutional infrastructure
Advance technology
Promote economic development
Ensure national security
Contribute to energy resources