Emphasizing evaluative thinking for complex systems change

Toolkit

Each portfolio team within the Economic Justice Program was tasked with creating its own approach to learning and evaluation to address the complex challenges that it was seeking to address.

As part of this effort, program teams developed milestones, learning strategies, and theories of change that considered the longer-term vision for their work and the activities and assumptions on which this vision was built.

The MEL team supported this process by providing templates and engaging with portfolio teams as they undertook this process. This series includes resources from this work, including templates for the theory of change and learning strategy, guidance on developing milestones, and examples from EJP.

While these resources were developed for a donors organization, these templates and guidance notes have broader relevance to organizations working on complex challenges and seeking to improve their learning approach.

Resources in this series

  • A guide to developing, refining, and using milestones

    This guide provides a set of recommended steps for defining, refining, and integrating milestones while developing a theory of change.

    This resource is part of the MEL toolkit for grantmakers and grantees resource collection.

  • Theory of change example for grant portfolios

    This resource is a theory of change example that was developed for an anti-corruption portfolio (2016–21); it includes standard theory-of-change components, such as outcomes and activities, as well as elements more specific to OSF’s longer-term strategi

  • Template for developing a portfolio learning strategy

    This resource is the template that the Economic Justice Program MEL team developed for the portfolio learning agendas of EJP's inaugural strategy.

    This resource is part of the MEL toolkit for grantmakers and grantees resource collection.

This series is part of a resource collection

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