Everybody is using the term “theory of change”. Do they mean the same thing?
Yes and no. Pretty much anyone using the term means that the initiative has a belief about how it works. But the similarity may end there. Some people have a one sentence “theory”, such as “youth need safe physical and psychological environments in order to learn”. Partly because of the inconsistency in usage, we developed this site to help you develop a theory with the necessary level of detail, that shows the necessary conditions needed for change, your activities, benchmarks of short, medium and long-term goals, indicators of success and underlying beliefs and assumptions. Be careful when someone tells you they have a theory of change, or a funder asks for one, that you know what THEY mean.
