Theory of Change

Theory of Change is both a theory and a method for bringing about social change.  A Theory of Change for a particular social change initiative defines all the building blocks required to bring about the initiative’s long-term goal. This set of causally linked building blocks--interchangeably referred to as outcomes, results, accomplishments, or preconditions—is depicted on a map known as a causal pathway or an outcomes framework, which is a graphic representation of what participants in the process believe needs to happen to achieve the long-term goal.

A Theory of Change describes the types of interventions (a single program or a comprehensive community initiative) needed to bring about the outcomes depicted in the causal pathway map. Each outcome in the causal pathway is tied to an intervention, revealing the often complex web of activity needed to bring about change. Because a Theory of Change provides a clear and testable hypothesis about how change will occur and what it will look like it allows for accountability in the work process as well as  credibility of results, because they are predicted to happen in a certain way.  As a roadmap, a Theory of Change identifies measurable indicators of success and keeps the process of implementation and evaluation transparent, so everyone knows what is happening and why. 

Stakeholders value theories of change as part of program planning and evaluation because they create a commonly understood vision of the long-term goals, how they will be reached, and what will be used to measure progress along the way.

ActKnowledge is a nationally recognized leader in the development and application of the Theory of Change approach to planning and evaluation.  Most of our research, planning, and capacity-building efforts use this approach.  ActKnowledge was funded in 2004 and 2005 to develop the first on-line tool for creating and learning Theories of Change.  Continuing the Theory of Change tradition that the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change disseminated, we provide curricula, training, and materials through the Theory of Change website (http://www.theoryofchange.org).

Created and maintained by ActKnowledge, this website includes materials and information developed by ActKnowledge and our partners at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change.  www.theoryofchange.org provides an overview of TOC and its origins and an introduction to ActKnowledge and the Aspen Institute’s methods for creating a TOC, as well as information about TOC training and technical assistance and additional materials for experienced users of TOC on advanced topics.

We have provided Theory of Change training, technical assistance, and review to national and international organizations such as:

• California Endowment, Los Angeles
• Lumina Foundation for Education, Indianapolis
• Women for Women International, Washington, DC
• Third Wave Foundation, New York
• Girl Scouts of America, New York
• Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, OH
• National Community Development Institute, Oakland, CA
• Community Network for Youth Development, San Francisco
• Center for Excellence, Channel Islands (Santa Barbara), CA
• California Proposition 10 County Commissions
• Ball Foundation, Glen Ellyn, IL
• Northern College,South Yorkshire, England
• Keystone, London, England

Theory of Change emerged in the 1990s from the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change.  ActKnowledge partnered with Aspen on applying Theory of Change to real-world situations and has been refining the theory and practice behind Theory of Change since 2000.  ActKnowledge is working to bring out Theory of Change Online, a free, flash-technology application that anyone can use to create their own Theory of Change.  ActKnowledge is also working with Christopher Barber Associates on SightLines, a web-enabled tracking and management system that allows organizations to create a Theory of Change, put it into effect, and actively track its implementation.

www.actknowledge.org

The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (the “Roundtable”) was established by the Aspen Institute in 1992 as a forum for people engaged comprehensive community initiatives. Roundtable participants from foundations, program agencies, research organizations, and government meet to discuss the lessons from initiatives across the country and to work on the common problems they face.

www.aspenroundtable.org

History

Theories of change in some form were used as tools for program evaluation long before ActKnowledge or the Roundtable began refining the process. It is probably impossible to pinpoint the “first” use of the term “Theory of Change,” but a hint at its origins can be found in the evaluation community among the work of notable methodologists, such as Huey Chen, Peter Rossi, Michael Quinn Patton, and Carol Weiss. These methodologists, along with a host of others, have been thinking about how to apply program theories to evaluation since 1980.

The Roundtable has been one contributor to the recent interest in theories of change related to community initiatives. Community-based change initiatives often have ambitious goals, and so planning specific on-the-ground strategies to those goals is difficult. Likewise, the task of planning and carrying out evaluation research that can inform practice and reveal broader lessons for the field in general is a challenge. The Roundtable has been particularly intrigued by the difficult task of planning and evaluating complex community initiatives, and has taken steps to move the field forward in creating new ways to think about how to tackle these tasks.

The Roundtable’s early work focused on working through the challenges of evaluating complex community initiatives. This work culminated in a 1995 publication, New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives. In that book, Carol Weiss, a member of the Roundtable’s steering committee on evaluation, hypothesized that a key reason complex programs are so difficult to evaluate is that the assumptions that inspire them are poorly articulated. She argued that stakeholders of complex community initiatives typically are unclear about how the change process will unfold and therefore place little attention to the early and mid-term changes that need to happen in order for a longer term goal to be reached. The lack of clarity about the “mini-steps” that must be taken to reach a long term outcome not only makes the task of evaluating a complex initiative challenging, but reduces the likelihood that all of the important factors related to the long term goal will be addressed.

Weiss popularized the term “Theory of Change” as a way to describe the set of assumptions that explain both the mini-steps that lead to the long-term goal of interest and the connections between program activities and outcomes that occur at each step of the way. She challenged designers of complex community-based initiatives to be specific about the theories of change guiding their work and suggested that doing so would improve their overall evaluation plans and would strengthen their ability to claim credit for outcomes that were predicted in their theory. She called for the use of an approach that at first blush seems like common sense: lay out the sequence of outcomes that are expected to occur as the result of an intervention, and plan an evaluation strategy around tracking whether these expected outcomes are actually produced. Her stature in the field, and the apparent promise of this idea motivated a number of foundations to support the use of this technique—later termed “the Theory of Change approach”—in the evaluations of early community change initiatives. In the years that followed, a number of evaluations were developed around this approach, fueling more interest in the field about its value.