A theory of change in one afternoon

A theory of change is a simple picture of how your work leads to the change you want. Funders ask for one, but its real value is for you: it shows which activities matter, what you are assuming, and what you should measure. You can draft a useful first version in an afternoon.

You need four hours, a large sheet of paper (or several A4 sheets taped together), sticky notes or small cards, and two or three people who know the work. If you can, include someone who uses your product or service.

Hour one: the change you want

Start at the end. In one sentence, write the long-term change you want to see for a specific group of people in a specific place. Put it at the right-hand edge of the sheet. “More women in our district earn a steady income from home-based businesses” is better than “end poverty”: it is ambitious, but you can imagine seeing it.

Then spend the rest of the hour on the problem. Why does this change not happen already? Write each cause on its own note: no access to buyers, no record-keeping, no capital for materials, families who worry about travel. Group the notes. You will not solve all of them, and that is fine; the point is to see them.

Hour two: the steps between

Work backwards from the long-term change. What has to be true just before it happens? And before that? These are your outcomes: changes in what people know, do or have. Place them in a chain from left to right.

For the example above, a chain might read: women learn to price and record sales; they sell to buyers outside their street; their income becomes steadier; they reinvest and grow. Keep each outcome concrete enough that you could ask someone whether it has happened.

Hour three: your activities and assumptions

Now add what you actually do: training sessions, a buying service, a WhatsApp catalogue, mentoring. Draw a line from each activity to the outcome it is meant to cause. Activities with no line are worth questioning. Outcomes with no activity show a gap: either someone else covers it, or your plan is missing a piece.

Then write your assumptions on a different colour of note. Every arrow rests on one. “Families will allow women to attend sessions if they are held nearby.” “City buyers will pay a fair price for handmade goods.” The riskiest assumptions are the ones to test first, before you spend money at scale.

Hour four: how you will know

For each outcome, choose one or two things you can count or observe without a big budget: the number of women who keep sales records after three months, the share of sales to buyers outside the district, income reported in a short phone survey six months on. Write down where each number will come from and how often you will check it.

Finish by drawing the whole thing again, neatly, on one page. Put the date on it. It is a draft, and you will change it as you learn.

Common traps

• Listing activities as if they were outcomes: “ran 10 trainings” is an activity; “participants keep records” is an outcome
• Making the long-term change so broad that nothing you do could ever be linked to it
• Hiding assumptions because they feel uncomfortable
• Choosing indicators you have no way of collecting
• Writing it once for a funder and never looking at it again

See a theory of change at work

SIA uses the same logic for its own work. Its theory of change follows changemakers through five stages, with each stage building capability, capital or connections, and measures results at four levels: learning, enterprise, capital and ecosystem, and systems. Free guides for founders and facilitators are collected on Toolkits & Resources.

Once your draft is done, Measuring impact on a small budget shows how to collect the numbers you chose without hiring an evaluator.

Keep it alive

Pin the one-page version where your team can see it. Look at it every three months: which assumptions turned out to be right, which were wrong, and what you changed as a result. When a funder asks for a theory of change, send the current version, with a note on what you have learned since the last one. That note often impresses more than the diagram.