Making causal pathways visible amid complexity

This report from 2021 shares findings from an investigation into how social change agents, including philanthropists, can better understand and learn from ongoing changes and improve their strategies now and in the future.

This investigation, carried out by 18 evaluators and methodologists, was summarised as making visible causal pathways in complex, systemic work. It proposed five experiments to progress this work:

1. Building a common definition, building awareness, becoming the next buzzword.
2. Broadening the participation in deep dialogues about how we make causal pathways visible.
3. Experimenting with evaluations that look beyond the intervention to the larger ecosystem of a project.
4. Experimenting with shifting power within evaluations.
5. Harnessing social media to move beyond the echo chamber of methodologists.