Brief

Effective Practice #1: Theory of Change

1/15/2026

How can we ground collaboration in a strong Theory of Change (ToC)? This resource focuses on using community dashboards to make the North Star and Theory of Change visible and actionable, while communicating progress on meaningful, measurable, and regularly updated population-level outcomes.

Organization

Finding Common Purpose

Organization

Finding Common Purpose

Central to FCP’s mission is the belief that publicly accessible and actionable outcomes data  is key to strengthening the cross-sector collaborations that ensure that working Americans can thrive in ways that matter to them. The infrastructure and practices that support communities in identifying collective goals and tracking progress are essential to catalyzing action and driving the systemic shifts needed to improve lived experience across the country. 

Within this context, community dashboards are an underutilized strategic tool that can accelerate and sustain common purpose and collaboration across the field of place-based work. If deployed well, they can act as vehicles for ensuring public access and commitment to outcomes that advance collectively-held communal goals. In a study of over 572 place-based partnerships,  we identified six effective practices that when implemented together can support the success and sustainability of community dashboards. On a broader scale, these practices are valuable for ensuring the success of other modes of public outcomes sharing. 

Overview

In this brief, we explore the Theory of Change as an effective practice for sharing outcomes in place-based efforts. A Theory of Change (ToC) is a comprehensive blueprint for why a policy, program, or initiative is expected to lead to a desired outcome in a particular context. It identifies a clear pathway, showing how specific strategies can lead to the desired outcome. It grounds an organization or collaborative’s efforts and provides the foundation for defining a focused set of holistic, interconnected outcomes tied to a shared “north star.” 

This practice area focuses on using community dashboards to make the ToC visible and actionable, and communicate progress on meaningful, measurable, and regularly updated population-level outcomes. Developed with local residents, a strong ToC should reflect shared aspirations, values, priorities, and current realities in a community. When actively used by community members and institutions, the ToC serves as an important reference point for building shared understanding, aligning strategy and action, and fostering collective accountability among residents, leaders, and institutions.

While many community dashboards track population-level outcomes, place-based partnerships (PBPs) often find it difficult to connect the work of local initiatives and partners to shifts in these long-term measures. The best practices below aim to help PBIs address this gap by grounding community dashboards in a clear, shared ToC that articulates pathways, strategies, and assumptions linking activities to outcomes.

Section 1: Intentional and Inclusive Stakeholder Engagement

A strong Theory of Change (ToC) is grounded in the insights of those closest to the work. Engaging a diverse group of stakeholders, including residents, grassroots leaders, and institutional partners, helps ensure the ToC reflects real community needs and perspectives. 
Conduct stakeholder mapping to identify key groups who should shape the ToC.
Aim for a diverse, cross-sector mix of individuals whose institutional roles and lived experience are essential for developing a clear, realistic, and actionable ToC. Include:

This ensures the ToC is rooted in community realities, has buy-in from key actors, and is positioned to inform action, strategy, and accountability.

Align stakeholders on the intended outputs of the ToC development process.
Develop alignment around: 

Iterate drafts with key stakeholder groups to strengthen the ToC and build buy-in.
Share and refine drafts through feedback cycles to build shared understanding and ensure the ToC reflects diverse perspectives across stakeholder groups. The iteration process itself can build momentum and buy-in across key stakeholders to use the ToC in their work—engaging partners early and often increases the likelihood they will use it to guide their work. 

Support the formal adoption of shared goals and indicators across key stakeholders.
Formal adoption helps ensure that shared goals and indicators are trusted, regularly used, and consistently updated. This can look like funders incorporating goals and indicators into RFPs, advocacy groups aligning their messaging, or local partners signing on to use the same measures—reinforcing their role as common guideposts for strategy, learning, and accountability. 

Section 2: Community-defined vision and outcomes

The foundation for an effective community dashboard is a shared vision of what it means to thrive in the community. A ToC developed through community input helps define that vision and identify clear, meaningful outcomes to measure and track over time. 

Facilitate a community-driven process to define a shared vision of what it means to thrive in the community.
The process to define a shared vision should be grounded in the lived experiences and hopes of local residents. Helpful tools for identifying and outlining these experiences may include the use of storytelling, asset mapping, or visioning exercises to surface values, priorities, and hopes. The vision should be specific enough to guide strategy, but broad enough to inspire cross-sector alignment and for all community members to see themselves represented.

Communicate a focused set of population-level outcomes.
Limit the number of tracked outcomes to those most aligned with the community’s vision and most feasible to monitor over time. Too many outcomes can dilute focus and strategy and make data collection, use, and presentation more difficult. 

Break down long-term goals into actionable, intermediate milestones.
Define clear short- and medium-term goals that stakeholders can more easily contribute to. This helps the initiative make long-term goals more actionable and tangible, show progress meaningfully, build buy-in among stakeholders, celebrate small wins along the way, and visualize paths to achieving long-term goals. 

Understand and align the ToC with existing local goals and initiatives.
Scan what plans and goals are already in place (e.g., school district plans, city- and state-wide initiatives), and position the initiative to support, complement, or amplify existing local efforts.Define key terms to ensure shared understanding.
Identify and clarify what key terms in the ToC mean in the community’s specific context. Shared definitions help to avoid misalignment of action and strategy across partners.

Section 3: Meaningful indicator selection and use

The ToC provides a framework for selecting indicators that reflect the outcomes the community cares most about. Choosing indicators that are practical, relevant, and equitable makes the dashboard more useful for tracking progress, informing fair decisions, and supporting continuous learning and improvement across stakeholders.

Select a limited number of outcome indicators that are easy to understand.
Tracking and communicating too many indicators can make it more difficult to understand progress being made. Indicators can be direct or by proxy, leading or lagging, qualitative or quantitative.

Publicly set baseline and target values, including short- and mid-term goals.
This will help build transparency and show more immediate progress towards long-term goals. 

Ensure indicators collectively tell a coherent, meaningful story of progress.
Choose indicators that, when viewed together, reflect how key outcomes are interconnected and aligned with what community members care about. For instance, child wellbeing cannot simply be understood from examining educational outcomes. Household and communal factors also impact children and should be considered in tandem. Aim for a holistic picture that captures individual, family, and system-level conditions—such as whole child or whole family well-being and how social determinants shape outcomes.

Choose indicators with accessible, reliable, and regularly updated data sources.
Prioritize indicators that use data sources that are publicly available, verifiable, and updated at least annually. This builds trust in the data, improves stakeholder familiarity with the data, and makes the indicators more useful for informing policy and practice. Disaggregate data to reveal disparities and target action.
Break down data by race, income, or other key demographics to spotlight inequities and inform more effective, targeted strategies. Visualizing disaggregated data can spark critical conversations among partners and drive coordinate efforts to close gaps and advance equity. 

Section 4: Support ongoing use, learning and accountability

The community dashboard should animate the ToC  by visualizing its key outcomes and indicators in clear, accessible formats tailored to different audiences—residents, funders, local leaders, and others. A well-designed dashboard makes the ToC tangible, tells a compelling story of community hopes and progress, and helps initiatives engage a broader network in achieving shared goals as well as promoting transparency and accountability.

Use the Community Dashboard to make the ToC visible and actionable.
Visualize the ToC and key indicators in clear, accessible formats that resonate with different audiences (e.g., residents, funders, school leaders). A well-designed and actively used dashboard helps make the ToC tangible, engages a broader network in the initiative’s goals, and conveys a compelling, actionable story about a community’s hopes and progress.Embed the ToC in regular cycles of reflection, learning, and improvement.

Treat the ToC as a living framework and part of the initiative’s learning culture—revisit it with partners, residents, and other key stakeholders annually or at key milestones. Use these moments to reflect on progress, assess what’s working, and refine strategies so that the ToC continues to guide long-term direction and stays relevant as the community evolves.Use the ToC and indicators to foster shared accountability.

Publicly track and share ToC progress to create a culture of transparency and shared responsibility. This helps shift the ToC from a static planning tool to a mechanism for continuous improvement and shared accountability.

Closing

The best practices detailed above are aimed at developing an aspirational yet realistic Theory of Change. One that is grounded in community realities, illustrates  a collective vision for thriving, and charts a path for accessing that vision. Done thoughtfully and inclusively, the ToC can serve as a guidepost for clearly aligning strategies with outcomes. 

At FCP, we believe that this investment is a critical component in driving a community-led vision for what it means to thrive. For more information on our approach, or for questions about how to learn more, please complete the contact form at LINK.