Start With Impact: How a Clear Theory of Change Grounds Your Nonprofit’s Strategy
A clear theory of change is the underpinning of an effective nonprofit strategy and strategic plan. It describes how an organization will translate its resources and programs into meaningful, measurable impact — articulating your organization’s intended impact, the results you aim to see within a medium timeframe, such as the next 10 years.
Areas of intended impact may include individual and family impacts, such as changes in skills, behavior, health, financial status, or family stability, or population level impacts, such as changes in health, education, safety, or economic conditions. Intended impact could also be influence impacts, such as changes in visibility of an issue or community norms, or in the form of leverage, such as changes in public funds or policy.
The theory of change is a conceptual roadmap for how your organization will get there. Along with your mission, vision, and values, it is the starting point for developing your strategic plan.
A theory of change answers:
Who you are seeking to benefit or influence
What benefits/outcomes you are seeking to achieve
How you will make change, specifically the activities and strategies
Where your organization will do its work
A good theory of change creates accountability by defining intended impact, the results you aim to see. By setting a target, you can work backward to identify the necessary activities, strategies, and resources to get there. When we worked with Legal Services for Children to design their theory of change, we backwards mapped from their intended impact, to intermediate outcomes, to outputs, to their programs and activities. It can be tempting to look at what you are currently doing and map forward, but by looking at your vision and intended impact, you can map backward to design a logic model and basis of a strategy that works.
A theory of change should also be measurable, so you can track your progress against your intended impact. Over time you can test, refine, and improve your theory of change by tracking results, including intermediate outcomes, to learn what is working and make adjustments as needed.
As with all aspects of strategic planning, we recommend engaging constituents, including those most impacted by your organization’s mission, as you develop your theory of change. This ensures that the theory of change benefits from unique and valuable perspectives and gets an adequate stress test from constituents with different perspectives before it is adopted.