Crafting Powerful Questions
Positive, strengths-based, open-ended questions can all be useful ways to engage with colleagues, clients, volunteers and boards. Asking why questions prompts people to make connections, identify patterns, and explore new ideas. Learning the art of crafting questions that open up creative thinking and new ideas is an important way to ensure that conversation isnt inadvertently shut-down. This agenda and worksheet can help you delve deeper into new questions for your organization to ask about its mission, theory of change and program design.
An Advocacy Theory of Change
This tool can be used to design an advocacy theory of change. It leads a group through six questions for discussion, provides facilitation tips, and several graphic representations of what final strategies might look like.
Theory of Change
Theory of Change is a method or technique that can assist communities to think about, plan and evaluate their work. It involves backwards mapping from the goals or desired outcomes of the program to identify what is needed in the program design to accomplish these goals. This website offers in depth resources, guides, and examples for how to develop and apply a TOC.
Theory of Change Facilitator Source Book
This facilitator source book defines Theory of Change vocabulary, offers suggestions for preparation for group process, and provides a step-by-step explanation of what it takes to design a Theory of Change.
Theories of Change and Logic Models: Telling Them Apart
A logic model can be used separately or in addition to a TOC, though the focus of a logic model is more programmatic. Two sources are offered here: (1) a guide to developing a logic model and, (2) a presentation that helps distinguish between the two.