Every day it is becoming increasingly clear that traditional approaches to development are too slow to keep up with today’s global challenges. To tackle these challenges and build future solutions, we need young changemakers who dare to think outside the box. That is why Disrupt Development and the Advanced Master in International Development (AMID) of the Radboud University Nijmegen have joined hands to amplify the voices of young development professionals. In this Young Voices for Development blog series, young professionals of the AMID Young Professional programme rise to the stage to write about groundbreaking solutions and talk about inspiring innovations. In this blog post, Marie Hameeuw and Lauren Wessel dive into into impact management and change in the development sector, and especially into the Theory of Change. (The original blog post is posted on the AMID website: here)

Listening to the Wind of Change,
Reading about the Theory of Change

We know what you might be thinking… “Really, another blog post on impact management and change in the development sector? why?”. Trust us, we are aware that a lot has been said and written about assessing change as well as on the importance of it in the field of international development.

When googling something along the lines of “social impact measurement tools” a vast amount of information can be found on the matter. This can be rather overwhelming when trying to understand what the best tools out there are to plan for and measure change. The fact that the glossary of key terms of the World Bank Report on Evaluation of International Development Interventions is already 5 pages long shows us that assessing change is, in fact, an art and an expertise.

As part of the Advanced Masters in International Development (AMID) studies at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, we have been the lucky chosen duo to write a piece on a commonly used (though to some, not in the correct manner) instrument to plan and sometimes even measure change: the Theory of Change (ToC).

Whether you're a seasoned international development professional, a policy officer granted with the task of developing a Theory of Change for your department, an NGO officer writing a ToC for a grant application, or a student in international development needing to review one, then this blogpost might be of good use to you. Below we have compiled some of the blogs, policy briefs and (scientific) articles available on ToC in order to provide you with an overview of the discussion on the matter. There's something for all tastes.

We have tried to make a short ‘summary’ of what we have found online for every ‘subheading’ below. In addition, we will provide you with some hyperlinks to interesting blogs or articles that have inspired us1. Enjoy!

Theory of change for dummies: different views and opinions

What is a theory of change?

We have all heard about ToCs when it comes to monitoring and evaluation of development programmes or projects, but do we all mean the same thing when talking about them? Definitely not. ToC is a highly debated tool with no clear cut official definition. We can, however, all agree2 that a ToC is a planning process, the logic (thinking) behind how a specific intervention can generate specific results (change) and it allows us to critically think about this planning process by taking into account a wide range of assumptions of how change might occur. It is a rather flexible tool which can come in different creative forms (diagrams) and is often accompanied with a narrative text. Most commonly, ToCs are used in planning or evaluating policy/development programmes, usually created at the planning stage of the intervention, constructed in a collaborative manner (with all key stakeholders involved) to think about ultimate objectives and work back to trace out how to achieve these (what inputs/resources/actions are needed for change). It is a tool that looks at how and why initiatives work. For this reason, ToCs are often also called “a roadmap, a blueprint, an engine of change, a theory of action and more.”

A ToC works as follows: first, a long-term goal/vision statement is defined; from there, a backward mapping is conducted in order to systematically lay out each mini-step along the causal pathway, all the steps and preconditions needed to achieve the short-term, mid-term and long-term outcomes and eventually the long-term goal/vision. A ToC outlines the various causal linkages between the different outcomes. Often, but not necessarily, an outcome comes accompanied by an indicator in order to track progress. Nonetheless, not all ToC’s follow this process.

Praisers: Useful because...

A ToC is highly useful as it provides a big picture of the “real world” in which the intervention(s) will take place, incorporating a vast amount of elements related to the environment/context. Additionally, it takes into account all the different possible pathways (various assumptions) that might lead to change in order to be as prepared as possible for any possible obstacles which may affect and hamper the successful implementation of the activities. ToCs offer a structure to explain why outcomes have/have not occurred at the evaluation stage and allow us to test whether the assumed links between input activities and outcomes hold. It provides us with a clear description of how and why we believe change might occur. In simple terms, a ToC is useful as it allows us to complete the sentence: “if we do X, then Y will change because…”. Another positive aspect about using the ToC is that the development of one occurs in a collaborative manner, in a workshop setting, allowing different minds to think about the ins and outs of the interventions and context in which they will take place. What is also often positively argued about ToCs, is that they are a good learning tool. ToCs are meant to be developed and then revisited and re-adapted as the project/programme moves on. This allows the project/programme’s ToC to re-analyse the context in which change occurs as well as incorporate new relevant actors along the way. It is argued that during this re-visiting and re-adaptation process, new learning takes place.

Critics: Less useful because…

On the other hand of the spectrum, there are more critical perspectives on the matter which highlights the shortcomings that come with ToCs, or rather, how they are used in practice. Based on what is out there online, the following sentences illustrate quite well what critics think: “Theory of change has come to mean many things to many people, and in the process it has lost its soul” or  “(...) theories of change are everything and they are nothing”.

The first problem lies in the fact that there is no clear consensus on the ToC’s definition. This causes confusion on what it actually is and for what purposes it is truly needed. A ToC can be identified in three different ways: (i) as a way of thinking, overall action approach; (ii) as a process; (iii) as a product. The different ways of referring to a ToC does not make it clear enough as to what a ToC actually is. Hence, how can one use a ToC as a tool if one does not really understand what the tool is about? This results in people talking past one another.

Skeptics of ToC often also highlight the following arguments: (i) it is too academic, theoretical, which makes the ToC framework rather vague; (ii) it is a fuzzy concept partly due to the fact that it has originated from two different streams of thought: evaluation and “informed social practice” (logical/reflexive approach) (iii) ToCs are often used as a buzzword in the field of international development. What often happens is that too much focus is put on the need of having a ‘fancy’ ToC diagram because the ToC concept is something one should be using. Nonetheless, no real use is made of it. Thus, what is the need of developing a well-thought-through diagram for a proposal or an organisation’s mission if it is not used and abandoned along the way? A ToC is a roadmap of action that is developed in a collaborative manner, re-visited and re-adapted in order to achieve its ‘programmed vision’, however, this elaborate exercise often does not occur in practice. This can result in missing contextual information that is pertinent for the planned interventions as, most commonly, projects change after the ToC is developed; (iv) a ToC claims to be a collaborative thinking process which allows new actors ‘to tag along’ the way. However, a ToC process is more useful for those involved directly than for those who were not included from the start. In fact, most of the time the diagrams are largely indecipherable and “scare those new to ToC with their complexity”; (v) to many the problem already starts with the term ‘theory of change’. This is an interesting debate which we would recommend reading upon. See for instance the following blogs and articles on the matter: Ruesga, no year; Mulgan, 2016; Rasmussen, 2016.

ToC tips and tricks for specific themes

ToCs have a wide functionality and can be applied to all sorts of organisations, policies and programmes aiming to reach a certain vision and/or goal. We could thus argue that ToCs have different purposes and can therefore be used in different sectors. As a result, there might be specific elements per sector to take into account when developing a ToC. For instance, Patrick Pringle and Adelle Thomas show that ToCs can be useful for Climate Adaptation Programming because ToCs encourage contextual analysis and aim to answer the question of how change can happen given certain conditions (something quite consistent with development planning). The Guidance Note on Theory of Change approach to climate change adaptation programming by Dennis Bours Colleen McGinn & Patrick Pringle (2014) also gives interesting insights on the different usages of the ToC under climate change adaptation planning. In other situations, planning might need to be done more urgently and ad hoc, such as in Humanitarian Programming. Although some argue that these programmes do not need a ToC (as they tend(ed) to focus on immediate response or physical assistance) it seems like more and more humanitarian programmes/organisations are beginning to see that they might benefit from the logic of the ToC. In the ALNAP Review of Humanitarian Action, it is mentioned that in humanitarian impact assessment the “underlying logic or ‘theory of change’ must be clear and explicit, not over-ambitious and based on a solid understanding of humanitarian needs.”. Sandvik even developed a sector-wide Theory of Change for Humanitarian Innovation. And very recently, Mayra Buvinic and Megan O'Donnell (2021) argued that in order to get the importance on some (thematic or crosscutting) topics - in their case Women Empowerment - these indicators should be grounded in the ToC: “a smart approach is a deliberate approach”. The author's advice was limited to women economic empowerment, but it goes much broader. If you want a focus on a specific theme or indicator, explicitly including it in your ToC will help you attain focus on that issue.

Conclusion

At last, we hope to have left you enriched with new insights on ToCs, and hopefully, even improved your understanding on ToCs a little bit... Even though ToCs might be a complex and rather confusing instrument due to the lack of consensus on its definition and purpose, there are many ways to use it in planning, programming, communication, evaluation, and most importantly: there is not necessarily a “right” or “wrong” way to use it. We hope to have left you with some useful thinking material that might be of good use to you when thinking about how your organisation could apply or improve its usage of ToCs. All in all, we hope to have sparked an interest in you to dig a little deeper on the matter and to not take ToCs for granted, make sure to use it as an active instrument and learning tool within your line of work. We are curious and open to hearing your thoughts and comments on defining ToCs, their uses, other relevant articles or blogs, among others. Feel free to share them below!

[1] Also, have a look at the following resource that also compiled different articles on ToCs.

[2]Another relevant paper laying out the different elements on which there is consensus when it comes to defining ToCs. 

[3] See also the survey conducted by Vogel, 2012.