SWOT Analysis

Walden University
SWOT Analysis Template
Fill out this SWOT analysis table when examining the school in the interactive
learning community, located in this Week’s Resources. Include this table within
your 2-3 page paper that addresses one of the most important strategic issues
facing the organization and why it is an important strategic issue.
Strengths
Opportunities
Weaknesses
Threats
© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc.
Page 1 of 1
AUGUST 2004
ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE
ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE
New York, New York 10010
212-677-5510
www.aspeninstitute.org
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
281 Park Avenue South
THEORY OF CHANGE
A S A T O O L F O R S T R AT E G I C P L A N N I N G
A
R e p o r t
o n
E a r l y
E x p e r i e n c e s
ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE
Andrea A. Anderson, Ph.D.
AUGUST 2004
THEORY OF CHANGE AS A TOOL FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING
The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change
ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE
THEORY OF CHANGE
A S A T O O L F O R S T R AT E G I C P L A N N I N G
A
R e p o r t
o n
E a r l y
E x p e r i e n c e s
Andrea A. Anderson, Ph.D.
Table of Contents
1
Introduction and Case Study Background
2
Section One: The Theory of Change Approach
4
The Roundtable and ActKnowledge Develop TOC Training Tools
4
Exploring the TOC Method with PACK Planning Grantees
6
Section Two: The Wallace Foundation PACK Initiative Summary
of the Framework
7
Using TOC as a Planning Tool for PACK: The Quest for Accountability
10
Section Three: Illustrating the Components of a Theory of Change
with an Example from PACK: Taking a Look at Elm Harbor’s TOC
10
Elm Harbor’s Long-Term Outcome and Outcomes Framework
11
Elm Harbor’s Assumptions
13
Elm Harbor’s Programmatic Strategies
14
Elm Harbor’s Indicators of Success
15
Summary of the Elements of a Theory of Change
16
Section Four: The Case Study of Three PACK Planning Grantees
16
Elm River: Experience with the TOC Process
19
Blackstone
20
Palmdale
24
Section Five: Lessons Learned
32
Conclusion
Introduction and Case Study Background
T
he purpose of this paper is to introduce a new methodology for planning
community-based initiatives—the Theory of Change (TOC) approach.
Through lessons learned from a case study of how TOC was applied
during the planning phase of The Wallace Foundation (Foundation)1 Parents and
Communities for Kids (PACK) initiative, the utility of this technique and the
challenges involved in employing it are illustrated. The case study was designed
to highlight lessons that will be of most interest to program planners, evaluators,
and funders who are interested in applying this method to their work.
SECTION ONE of the paper begins with a review of the role of the Aspen
Institute Roundtable on Community Change (Roundtable)2 in developing
training and research around the TOC approach to planning and evaluation. It
reviews the initial work done to apply TOC to evaluation, and presents the latest
Roundtable thinking on how TOC can be used to provoke clear thinking about
strategic planning for new initiatives.
SECTION TWO introduces the PACK initiative and explains how the Foundation
envisioned using the TOC approach to enhance the plans of planning grantees.
SECTION THREE explains the components of a TOC through a review of the
theory created by one of the PACK sites. This section of the paper is designed to
familiarize the reader with the TOC process and jargon so that the observations
and lessons learned presented in subsequent sections are more readily understood.
In SECTION FOUR, highlights from each site’s planning process are presented,
with an eye toward the challenges faced by the sites as they used TOC to develop
their PACK grant proposals, and the insights that the TOC process afforded.
Elements of each site’s TOC are highlighted in this section to set the stage for a
discussion of lessons learned about how useful TOC is as a planning tool.
SECTION FIVE addresses the lessons learned from this demonstration of how
TOC was used as a planning tool and poses questions that will be addressed as
the field continues to refine its approach to training and technical assistance
around the TOC approach.
1 Formerly the DeWitt Wallace–Reader’s Digest Fund and the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Fund
which legally merged in 2003 to become The Wallace Foundation.
2 The Roundtable worked in partnership with consultants from ActKnowledge to develop training
and technical assistance materials for the Foundation and their PACK grantees. For further information about ActKnowledge, contact Helene Clark at www.actknowledge.org.
A Report on Early Experiences – 1
SECTION ONE:
The Theory of Change Approach
C
ommunity-based change initiatives (CCIs)—be they programs aimed at
a special population or large-scale interventions designed to bring about
community-wide changes—are increasingly being used by foundations as
vehicles to promote their missions. These initiatives often have ambitious goals,
and so planning specific on-the-ground strategies to meet those goals is difficult.
Likewise, the task of planning and carrying out evaluation research that can
inform practice and surface broader lessons for the field in general is a challenge.
The Roundtable has been particularly intrigued by the difficult task of evaluating
complex community initiatives and has taken steps to move the field forward in
creating new ways to think about this problem.
The Roundtable’s early work in evaluation 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 on the early
and midterm changes that need to happen in order for a longer-term goal to be
reached. The lack of clarity about the “ministeps” 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 ministeps 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
2 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
the evaluations of early CCI efforts.3 As a result of the popularity of the
approach, many in the field have turned to the Roundtable to better understand
how to apply TOC techniques to their own work.
As defined by the Roundtable,4 the TOC process hinges on defining all of the
necessary and sufficient preconditions required to bring about a given long-term
outcome. In a departure from Weiss, the Roundtable recommends using a technique called “backward mapping” that requires planners to think in backward
steps from the long-term goal to the intermediate and then early-term changes
that would be required to cause the desired change. At each step, the outcomes
produced are considered to be preconditions for the stage that follows. In other
words, the preconditions for the long-term outcome occur in the intermediate
stage of change, and the preconditions for the intermediate outcomes occur in
the early stages.5 This set of connected outcomes is depicted in a map known
as an outcomes framework, which is a graphic representation of the change process
as it is understood by the planners and the skeleton around which the other
elements of the theory are developed.
During the process of creating the outcomes framework, participants are required
to articulate as many of their assumptions about the change process as they can
so that these can be examined and even tested to determine if any key assumptions are hard to support (or even false). There are typically three important types
of assumptions to consider: (a) assertions about the connections among longterm, intermediate, and early outcomes on the map; (b) substantiation for the
claim that all of the important preconditions for success have been identified;
and (c) justifications supporting the links between program activities and the
outcomes they are expected to produce. A fourth type of assumption that outlines the contextual or environmental factors that will support or hinder progress
toward the realization of outcomes in the outcomes framework is often an
additional important factor in illustrating the complete TOC.
3 The Annie E. Casey Foundation was an early supporter of Weiss’s approach, applying her insights
about theories of change in its evaluations of the Jobs Initiative and the Rebuilding Communities
Initiative. A number of national foundations have also supported the application of this approach
in their work, including the Rockefeller Foundation, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
4 A number of researchers, planners, and practitioners and technical assistance providers use the
terms logic model or outcomes framework to denote their understanding of the relationship between
social interventions and the changes in early, intermediate, and longer-term outcomes. Likewise,
backward mapping and outcomes-based planning are terms that have been used to describe the
process of doing this work. TOC borrows from and builds on those approaches to planning.
5 While it is instructive to think of this as a three-step process leading to links among long-term,
intermediate, and early points in the change process, typically the backward mapping approach
elicits more than three levels of change that are then grouped into the early, intermediate, and
long-term categories.
A Report on Early Experiences – 3
The TOC approach to planning is designed to encourage very clearly defined
outcomes at every step of the change process. Users are required to specify a
number of details about the nature of the desired change—including specifics
about the target population, the amount of change required to signal success, and
the time frame over which such change is expected to occur. This attention to
detail often helps both funders and grantees reassess the feasibility of reaching
goals that may have initially been vaguely defined and, in the end, promotes the
development of reasonable long-term outcome targets that are acceptable to all
parties.
THE ROUNDTABLE
AND ACTKNOWLEDGE
DEVELOP TOC
TRAINING TOOLS
The task of creating a TOC for a community-based initiative requires a significant amount of work—particularly in the cases where there is little empirical
research to draw on to craft plausible change pathways related to the stated goal.
While Carol Weiss and others have extolled the virtues of articulating theories of
change, little exists in the way of a methodology for applying the approach to
real-world situations. In response to this gap, the Roundtable took on the task
of developing tools that could be used with program stakeholders to develop
theories of change, spending a year working on training materials designed to
teach people ways to elicit theories of change for the purposes of program planning. In partnership with consultants from ActKnowledge,6 a series of workshops
were given during 2000–2001 to introduce the TOC approach to planning to
audiences made up of community-based program staff, funders, and technical
assistance providers. These workshops allowed the Roundtable to try a variety of
approaches to teaching the TOC method, and to refine a set of tools that could
be used by program stakeholders to develop theories of change on their own.
EXPLORING THE
TOC METHOD WITH
PACK PLANNING
GRANTEES
By the spring of 2001 the Roundtable was ready to test the effectiveness of its
TOC training tools with stakeholders of an actual initiative. The Roundtable
hoped that using the tools with planners who were developing a new intervention would show how well the materials communicated the key steps in the
theory development process. It was also expected that the participants in the pilot
test of the approach would produce strengthened program plans.
The Roundtable welcomed the opportunity to work with the Foundation to
learn about how TOC would work as a planning tool at the early stages of their
first large community-change initiative—Parents and Communities for Kids
(PACK). This seemed like an ideal opportunity for learning on both sides, as the
Foundation was eager to apply the rigor of the TOC planning process to the
development of PACK plans and to contribute to the field’s awareness and
understanding of the approach. As a result of this mutual interest in learning
from the PACK grantees’ experiences, the Foundation and the Roundtable developed a research plan designed to critically observe the TOC process throughout
6 With the generous support of several foundations: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Hewlitt
Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Coalition for
Community Foundations for Youth, and the Hawaii Community Foundation.
4 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
the planning period. The project was designed to generate lessons about three key
issues: (a) the advantages of using TOC as a planning tool; (b) the challenges
encountered while using the TOC approach to planning; and (c) ways to make
the Roundtable’s training materials more useful.
While all of the planning grantees were exposed to the TOC training sessions
and had access to the technical assistance made available by ActKnowledge, just
three of the Foundation’s twelve planning grantees were chosen as a sample for
the study of the planning process. The three sites represent the range of organizations that had planning grants for the PACK initiative:7
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The Elm Harbor team serves the region surrounding a midsize East Coast city.
This team is made up of two local foundations that typically support local
education and youth development programs.
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The Blackstone team, located in a large East Coast city, was made up of repre-
sentatives from a number of major cultural institutions—including a library,
children’s museum, botanical garden, art museum, zoo, and park. It formed
to think collectively about how to reach out to members of the ethnically
diverse neighborhoods in their backyards to promote an increase in the
utilization of the resources they had to offer. The group had little experience
planning interventions for families and youth, and no prior experience working together as a team before working on the PACK grant proposal.
>
The Palmdale team was composed of staff from a very highly regarded United
Way based in a midsized West Coast city. This team has been nationally
recognized for the quality of its programming for youth through collaborations with the local parks and recreation department as well as the libraries
and public school system. It came to the planning process with a wealth of
experience planning community-wide interventions.
In the next section of the paper, the PACK initiative is briefly described and the
Foundation’s expectations about the added value of the TOC approach are
explored.
7 For reporting purposes, the identities of the three study sites have been disguised. Throughout the
report, pseudonyms are used to protect their anonymity.
A Report on Early Experiences – 5
SECTION TWO:
The Wallace Foundation
PACK Initiative Summary of the Framework
I
n the spring of 2001, The Wallace Foundation launched an initiative designed
to improve learning outcomes for children through activities outside of the
traditional school day and to promote learning as a core community value.8
This initiative, known as Parents and Communities for Kids (PACK), grew out
of the Foundation’s experiences as a major funder of libraries, youth development, after-school programs, and family literacy programs. According to the
program description, the underlying assumption guiding PACK is that:
Schools cannot educate children by themselves. The supports that community assets provide, and the role that parents and families play are critical to
children’s learning and success.9
Twelve organizations from across the country received six-month planning
grants of $75,000 to develop strategies designed to improve informal learning
opportunities and supports for children between the ages of six and ten. These
communities were instructed to develop plans that met the following criteria:
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The strategies employed should improve the supply of quality out-of-school learning
opportunities for children and families.
They should increase the demand for and participation in such opportunities.
This increase in participation should be used to help children learn and prepare for
successful adulthood.10
In addition to these general guidelines, the Foundation had a number of other
important expectations of the programs they would ultimately fund:11
>
The programs were expected to emphasize strategy and focus to use existing
resources effectively. “It is not the goal of this initiative to fund massive new
programs; rather, it will support local efforts to deploy existing resources
effectively to reach target audiences and build sustainable supports for learning.”
>
The programs were required to place an emphasis on parents as both supporters
and suppliers of their children’s learning. “Research shows major payoffs for
8 Wallace Foundation, 2001, PACK program description, 1.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid 1–2.
6 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
children’s learning when parents are highly engaged. Parents, in the midst
of overwhelmingly busy lives, are looking for assistance in educating their
children successfully. Community institutions must find new ways of partnering with parents and of supporting their interest in helping their children
to learn.”
>
The Foundation anticipated that the programs would place an emphasis on making
community resources family friendly and learning friendly. “Many after-school
programs, cultural institutions, and youth-serving organizations do far less
than they could to support families as active participants or to incorporate
learning opportunities into their mission, programs, and services. The time is
right to enrich the learning environment and strengthen the family appeal of
cultural and community institutions.”
USING TOC AS A
PLANNING TOOL
FOR PACK: THE
QUEST FOR
ACCOUNTABILITY
As experienced funders and program designers, the Foundation staff knew that
designing a new community-based initiative would require rigorous planning and
clear thinking. The Foundation also knew that it was critically important for sites
to have a tool that would help them weigh strategic options against the ability to
generate the stated goals for families, communities, and children. They turned to
the theory of change approach as a mechanism to promote their grantees’ ability
to define outcomes that they would be able to hold themselves responsible to
produce, given their available resources.
The Foundation’s understanding of the value of TOC was a clear motivation
for encouraging their grantees to use this approach to articulate the types of
outcomes that would be produced at the child, family, and community levels of
analysis. Accountability is highly valued by the Foundation, and it was hoped
that clear thinking and communication about the specific types of changes that
could be expected at each level of analysis would help manage expectations and
promote clearer lines of accountability for both the Foundation and each grantee.
Furthermore, given the Foundation’s responsibility to the field to draw broad
lessons from the experiences of its grantees, it became critically important to be
able to document the mechanisms through which the funded strategies successfully produced improvements in informal learning for children, changes in
community capacity, and changes in capacities among parents. Each of these
aspects of accountability reinforced the Foundation’s interest in applying the
TOC approach to planning the PACK local initiatives.
The Foundation hoped that their own nascent set of assumptions related to what
it called “informal learning” could be used as a point of departure for developing
local theories of change. Under different circumstances, the guidelines outlined
in the previous section would have been most helpful to the local planning
teams. Given the requirements of the TOC approach at the site level, however,
a much richer foundation-level TOC should have been developed before sitelevel planning was begun. Therefore, on at least one important measure, the
A Report on Early Experiences – 7
Foundation failed its own test of accountability by not mirroring the level of
specificity about the change process that they required the sites to develop.
While staff at the Foundation did not use the TOC approach to develop a foundation-level TOC for the PACK initiative, some preliminary thought was given
to what the likely preconditions for informal learning would be in any given
community. These preliminary ideas are summarized in Figure 1. This graphic
representation of the Foundation’s early thinking was presented as a reflection of
the Foundation’s “action framework” during a TOC training session attended by
the planning grantees. At that time, neither the Foundation nor the Roundtable
anticipated how much the lack of clarity in the Foundation’s thinking would
impact the sites’ ability to develop theories that meshed with the Foundation’s
goals.
Had the Foundation worked through a TOC process before commissioning
proposals from the planning grantees, they would have been forced to develop
a clearer, more informed definition of their long-term goal. The Foundation
would also have come up against the dearth of empirical or descriptive research
in the field related to informal learning, and may have anticipated the conceptual
difficulties their grantees would have in developing change pathways related to
attaining this goal. Thus, by not insisting that the Foundation take on the TOC
process before sites began their work, the Roundtable missed the mark on being
fully accountable as purveyors of the TOC process.
The Roundtable and the Foundation had much to learn from using the TOC
approach as a planning tool for the PACK initiative. The next sections of the
paper explain the elements of a TOC in detail by highlighting excerpts of the
Elm Harbor proposal. Following this, a review of all three case study sites’ experiences with the TOC approach is presented. Lessons learned are discussed in the
final section of the report.
8 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
INITIAL ACTION FRAMEWORK: COMMUNITY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES PROJECT*
This figure was developed by staff at The Wallace Foundation, April 2001.
IMPROVED LEARNING FOR CHILDREN SIX TO TEN
Children reach the defined outcomes; parents and
community institutions sustain their support for out-of-school learning.
INCREASED SUPPORT FOR CHILDREN’S OUT-OF-SCHOOL LEARNING
Parents and community institutions provide engaging, challenging out-of-school
learning activities and reach a substantial proportion of children who lack these supports.
LINING THINGS UP: CHANGES IN SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Community institutions implement organizational change (supply),
active parent role (demand), and a consistent message to the community.
STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
Grantees and community stakeholders build and sustain a coalition and a strategy for
out-of-school learning, and define clear outcomes for children six to ten. Example: Improved
literacy skills and behaviors. Outcomes are specific about “How much?”, “For whom?”, and
“How will we know?” Benchmarks support a management plan for performance, change, and feedback.
Figure 1
* “Community Learning Opportunities Project” was the original, internal name for the PACK initiative.
A Report on Early Experiences – 9
SECTION THREE:
Illustrating the Components of a
Theory of Change with an Example from PACK:
Taking a Look at Elm Harbor’s TOC
E
ach of the PACK grantees was encouraged to use the TOC approach to
help them think through the development of strategies to improve informal
learning. This section of the paper examines one of the theories submitted
as part of a PACK proposal in order to highlight the elements of a TOC and
provide an example that can serve as a reference point throughout the rest of
the paper. The theory that is presented below was chosen because it is a clear
example of how the TOC concept can be applied to a new initiative.
ELM HARBOR’S
LONG-TERM
OUTCOME AND
OUTCOMES
FRAMEWORK
The Elm Harbor team defined their desired long-term goal simply as improved
learning for children and families. This definition of the long-term outcome
suggests that changes were anticipated for both children and families, yet the
statements that were used to operationalize the long-term outcome are related
only to changes in the children in their target area. Elm Harbor identified six
important dimensions of improved learning for children:
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Children in target area learn critical thinking skills.
Children learn about and appreciate diverse cultures.
Children develop a joy of learning and curiosity about the world.
Children and parents see a wide range of activities as learning opportunities.
Children become good citizens and engage in pro-social behavior.
Children develop strong communication and social development skills.
This view of the long-term outcome would appear to conflict with the range
outcomes specified in the PACK planning guidelines—the Foundation clearly
expected each site to propose long-term changes at the child, family, and community levels of analysis. A review of the Elm Harbor TOC shows, however, that
the changes to families’ capacities to promote learning and to the community’s
capacity to promote informal learning required by the Foundation in the guidelines occur in the TOC as preconditions to these long-term goals. The Elm
Harbor team articulated four preconditions that would be necessary to bring
about the long-range changes in informal learning for children:
>
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Families increase participation in learning activities at home and outside the home.
Parents and caregivers remain engaged and involved in their children’s learning
during the elementary school years.
10 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
>
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Children enjoy learning activities outside of school and stay engaged in family
learning.
The community values, encourages, and supports family learning.
Figure 2 depicts the outcomes framework for the Elm Harbor initiative. This
outcomes framework is a good model because it succinctly represents the relationship between changes at the family and community levels and changes for
children in the targeted area. Unlike many of the maps generated by users of the
TOC process, this one is relatively concise—each box summarizes a set of related
outcomes that jointly represent attainment of a particular precondition for success. Most often, theories of change depict far more complex pathways of change,
so in this regard the Elm Harbor example is not typical. For the purposes of illustrating the components of theories of change, however, this map illustrates quite
clearly the relationship between the long-term goal and the intermediate and
early changes that are required to bring it about.
ELM HARBOR’S
ASSUMPTIONS
The second component of a TOC is the set of assumptions that explain the
underlying logic of what has been depicted in the outcomes framework map.
These assumptions explain the connections between outcomes in the pathway,
and why the outcomes that are depicted are the complete set of necessary and
sufficient preconditions required to bring about the targeted outcome. Later,
assumptions are added that explain the connection between planned interventions and the expected outcomes.
Taken together, the assumptions in a TOC should tell the story about how and
why planners expect change to occur as depicted in the outcomes framework. As
an example of the explanatory power assumptions, the following excerpt was
taken from Elm Harbor’s TOC. This assumption explains the connection the
Elm Harbor team makes between the “community values and supports family
learning” box and the “improved learning for children and families” box in their
outcomes framework:
Initial and continued community support for family learning will, over
time, translate into community-wide values that consistently reinforce
family learning—creating a community-wide “culture of learning” in our
region. We assume, based on the enthusiastic response and level of investment by both parents and organizations to the collaborative effort of the
planning process, that continued collaboration and support for family
learning as PACK expands will lead to an increase in the investment of
current participants and attract new participants. In addition, we assume
that realization of the collectively designed institutional changes in welcoming practices and program improvements will contribute to greater
community support for family learning.
In many cases assumptions draw on theory from academic research. Since there
was not much in the way of academic theory for the Elm Harbor team to use to
A Report on Early Experiences – 11
ELM HARBOR OUTCOMES FRAMEWORK
IMPROVED LEARNING FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Families increase
participation
in learning
Parents/caregivers
remain engaged in
child’s learning
Parents and caregivers
understand family learning,
are aware of opportunities,
have access to opportunities,
and have the skills and
resources to participate
Children enjoy
learning activities
Programs welcome
families and offer a
wide variety of high-quality,
engaging activities
and programming
The community
values and supports
family learning
Key stakeholders
encourage and support
family learning
opportunities
STAKEHOLDERS IN THE ELM HARBOR REGION
COME TOGETHER TO CREATE THE PACK INITIATIVE
Figure 2
12 – Theory of Change as a Tool for Strategic Planning
substantiate the predicted connections in their change pathway, the team members grounded their assumptions in locally generated empirical evidence as much
as possible. Throughout the discussion of assumptions, the Elm Harbor team
blended their own insights with data collected during the planning stage from
parents and other stakeholders. This allowed them to test some assumptions
while there was still time to change their plans if they had been proven to be
off-base.
ELM HARBOR’S
PROGRAMMATIC
STRATEGIES
The third element of a TOC has to do with the strategies that will be put in
place to bring about each outcome in the outcomes framework. As previously
explained, the TOC approach focuses first on identifying all of the necessary and
sufficient preconditions for reaching a long-term goal. Only after these conditions have been identified and laid out in a change pathway can the appropriate
actions be developed to bring them about.
The Elm Harbor TOC provides a good of example of how more than one strategy
can be proposed to bring about a single outcome in the outcomes framework.
For example, Elm Harbor planned a number of activities designed to bring about
the outcome “Families increase participation in learning.” The planned strategies
include the following:12
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PACK develops and disseminates a family tool kit that provides information on
programs, discount coupons, free mailers for receiving more information,
and ideas for home-based family learning activities.
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PACK delivers family workshops that introduce the tool kit and teach families
fun learning activities they ca