For a nonprofit, the most important thing is to fulfill its mission, but that is not always easy, you encounter obstacles, you always want to do more, and donors sometimes push you in new and different directions. Theory of Change is a tool that intervenes to make the organization’s job easier by forcing us to identify the small change – real, measurable, and valuable – that we want to make in the world and to align how we do it with effectiveness and the resources we use.

It is not a bad form to measure our performance in a timely manner if we do it from the perspective of effectiveness toward the outcome we want to achieve – toward the change we have identified.

Tangible and intangible factors contribute to measurement. For the former, it will be easier to verify the results of our processes. For the latter, we take steps to listen to and engage our stakeholders. In the end, we will be able to say whether we are changing the world, and from which side.