The Story of Change

Last week we invited Lycia Harper from Glow Consulting to come and run a workshop with the Future Producers about evaluating the impact of the work they are doing with Watershed.  She introduced the group to ‘The Story of Change’. The handout from the session outlines the tool below.

Tips on developing stories of change

(1)       Write a list of beneficiaries who will experience some change as a result of the work or intervention.

(2)       Prioritise the list in order of significance of the change. Draw a line on your list to show which beneficiaries you’ll develop stories of change for.

(3)       Develop one story for each beneficiary.

(4)       Work iteratively and don’t be fixated on what you’ve already written; stories often change and evolve as you put in new material.

What we’ll do next

At the next workshop, we’ll review the stories and help you finalise your plans for evaluation research. 

Story of change approach

Beneficiary

Inputs

Outputs

Impacts

Indicators

Who benefits?

What is invested?

What are the activities and interventions?

What changes for the beneficiaries?

What would indicate change is happening?

How could we
measure it?

This can include you, the audience, funders, Watershed

Clue: it’s always time
and/or money

You might want to indicate how deep or sustained the change is

What data would you collect and how, how often, etc?