Tool 2: Developing a theory of change

If we are serious about social impact, the first thing that we need to do is clarify and make explicit our assumptions about how change happens in our context. We need a clear picture of what success looks like, and what we think are the necessary preconditions for achieving and sustaining success. In other words, we need to clarify and make explicit our theory of change.

There are two dimensions to a theory of change.

•    Identifying what we think needs to happen to achieve and sustain the changes, or outcomes, that we want to see. We call this mapping the outcome pathways to success.
•    Identifying who (people or institutions) we think can influence these outcomes positively or negatively. We call this mapping the activity ecosystem.

With a comprehensive theory of change in place, we can work out the ways in which we think we can (independently and with others) contribute most effectively to achieve the specific impacts we desire. And in our outcome pathways we have a ready-made set of outcome indicators that we can use to measure our progress in bringing this impact about.

While we believe that logic models are not helpful in developing overall long-term strategies, they can be useful to help design specific short-term strategies where the inputs, activities and objectives can be clearly defined within the overall framework of a theory of change.

The more our theory of change and our strategies are understood and shared by the other constituents of our interventions, the easier it is to work together in a systematic way to achieve impacts that matter to all – especially those most affected by what we do.

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