Setting strategy, and sticking to it, can be an arduous climb. Done successfully, it's remarkably satisfying.

The key is having the right tools and knowing how to get the most out of them. In the same vein as rope, ladders, pitons, and gloves are indispensable climbers' tools, logic models are an important tool for both planning and evaluation in the non-profit and social service sectors.

Over the years we have seen examples of strong models being implemented in the strategy and evaluation efforts of different organizations. When they work, program outcomes are enhanced. But we have also seen our share of situations where logic models were treated as some kind of add-on activity to ‘regular’ program or project management. The logic models in these cases were mainly used to construct a graphical depiction of a team’s wishful thinking. In such cases the models were not been anything more than just a piece of presentation material with no impact on strategy.

Starting here, and in four future posts, we’ll lay out some tips that can augment the success of your logic modeling. Should you choose to use some of the excellent material available on the web that can guide you in using the building blocks of logic models (such as 10 Great Resources for Creating a Theory of Change from the Philanthropy411 Blog), our hope is that these tips will enhance the process.

Tip 1. In designing your logic model, remember that it’s a process and it should involve people.

We’ve seen too many examples of attractively designed models that, in the end, pursue goals that were neither necessary nor achievable. Often was the case that the designers focused on the diagram itself, and the different techniques and formulas to draw and construct logic models, instead of looking at the process around building the logic model.

To leverage the strengths that logic models can provide, it is crucial to predicate the design on the input of stakeholders with field-expertise who you involve in uncovering the root causes to problems you seek to solve. In a pluralistic fashion, the stakeholders should help you depict the landscape for the initiative (more on this in Tip 2) in such a way that a program team can target relevant, valid causes to a problem.

Also, include measurement and evaluation in the people-process right away. Involve key people who are inextricably linked to the success of the project you are modeling. For instance, if you have a project to build the capacity of teachers, invite teachers into the logic modeling process to discuss inputs and indicators.

Because designing a logic model is a process, never treat it as a “one and done.” Don’t be trapped by false pressures to develop the best, perfect model in one fell swoop. Because good logic models are derived from good processes, take the time to draw several, to think through different scenarios with your stakeholders, and assess the potential impacts of the different versions. (More on this in the forthcoming tips.)

Next tip: Depicting the landscape to strengthen your logic model

Guidestar has just released the results of a survey entitled "The Effect of the Economy on the Nonprofit Sector: A June 2010 Survey.”

Chuck McLean and Carol Brouwer wrote the report, the purposes of which were “to explore how charitable organizations fared during the first five months of 2010 and to try to gauge the effect of the downturn in the economy on the American nonprofit sector.”

Among the findings, some issues stand out among public charities and grantmaker subsectors.

On the Charity Side

Public charities were asked if total contributions to their organization increased, decreased, or stayed about the same between January 1, 2010, and May 31, 2010, compared to the same period a year earlier. Thirty percent experienced an increase in contributions, while 28 percent remained the same. Forty percent reported a net decrease. McLean and Brouwer then asked, “What factors caused total contributions to decrease?” Forty percent said private foundation grants were smaller and 22 percent said that private foundation grants were discontinued. This in the face of 63 percent of the respondents stating that demand for their organization’s services increased!

Takeaway: charitable organizations faced smaller or discontinued grants from foundations in a climate where demand for their services is up.

On the Grantmaking Side

Now let’s look for a moment at the grantmaking side of the house. Eleven hundred of the 6,508 respondents indicated their organization awards grants, with 580 identifying themselves as private foundation/grantmakers (thus, in the mix of grantmakers we probably have a mix of charitable re-granting organizations in addition to private foundations). Among these 1,100 organizations indicating they give grants, 68 percent indicated that their giving remained the same or increased in the five-month period of January-May 2010 compared to last year. Further, 65 percent indicated that they made no major changes in their grantmaking. A much smaller proportions reporting they either cut back on programs (12 percent) or cut back on payments (8 percent).

Takeaway: Grantmaking, from the perch of the grantmaker, has remained the same. Few grantmakers have cut back on programs or payments. This is interesting in light of the above finding that charities report significant declines in grant funding.

What are the implications of this? There are several, I’m sure. For the purposes of this post I’ll constrain my thoughts to issues of impact and evaluation.

What Could Be Going On?

If I’m leading a charity, I might think the following to myself. “If my grant funding is down, yet trends suggest that grant givers have not changed their overall behavior, who is getting funded, and why?”

Since I’m a strategy and impact guy, my mind tends to turn to thoughts of monitoring and evaluation. It may be the case that funders are paying more attention to charities that understand how to evaluate their day-to-day work in ways that demonstrate true impacts.

We see from the Guidestar report that demand for services is up among charities. This implies that organizations are going to have to be very savvy at bringing their services to scale while not diluting impact. This is challenging if an organization doesn’t know its place in the charity ecosystem, doesn’t have clear outcomes delineated that should result from their services, and lacks a systematic way to track successes and failures. This could explain some of the variance in why foundations and grantmakers don’t report a general dilution in their funding. Perhaps there’s been a shift in giving to organizations they trust to create promised, sought-after impacts.

It’s also possible that funding is shifting within intact programs from charities that are working on the ground to those that are further from the “shop floor” – such as charity service providers, think-tanks, and other capacity building organizations.

What else could be at play here?

In November we teamed up with Kairos Learning to deliver two online hour-long courses, Building Accountability Into Your Team and Activating Your Program's Strategy and Evaluation.

Below you'll find the recording of the second virtual class,  Activating Your Program's Strategy and Evaluation, which presents an approachable perspective on setting strategy for achieving goals in education, nonprofit and community programs. 

Watch the video to learn:

• A simple yet effective technique for setting strategy and goals for your work
• How to effectively answer the question "Is my project reaching its goals?"
• How to confidently demonstrate to funding sources that your programs are effective

Let us hear your comments on this webinar -- what do you think of this topic? What else should we be covering?

[By the way, the chat window in the recording is not very readable. But this won't prevent you from enjoying the slides and the synchronized audio. If a higher resolution video becomes available, we'll post it.]

Stewart I. Donaldson is one of the leading figures in the area of theory-driven evaluation. In this book from 2007 he presents several interesting cases where program theory has been used. The reason for this is that Donaldson believes that there is a need for more literature and cases around this mature theory. We definitely agree and hope that this book will contribute to have society developers, strategists and others to read about how this approach effectively empowers development projects.
We recommend the book and would also like to point out two things that Donaldson mentions in his book

Program theory has evolved and been widely accepted to become a strategic tool, not only as a standalone theory but as an integral part of many modern and popular evaluation and strategy practices. We constantly try to push the approach to become a fundamental component for the strategy work of an initiative. We hope more and more developers understand the strengths of doing so.

Donaldson points out how hard it is to involve necessary stakeholders in the process. we have experience of that too, but our recommendation is to talk about this work as the strategic tool rather than evaluation. Evaluation rarely gets enough attention in the beginning by stakeholders, so try to change the way you talk about the process in order to have them set aside necessary time to participate. We have been very successful with this, managing to get groups together even when stakeholders have been spread out all over the country.

Read, reflect and continue the exchange of experience with us.