5. Program Logic Models

Impact Models

Everyone plans to make a meaningful impact. But too often we fail to achieve it. Why?

The first problem is if your internal factors are mismatched to your desired impact (remember the wet firewood). For example, you ask busy Headteacher to do five hour training of their staff. Some might do it...but most will never do it no matter how fabulous your design is.

The second problem is if your input strategy is mismatched to your desired impact (imagine using a match on an electric stove). For example, one organization designed a program to fight malaria by dropping bed nets from an airplane. Will the villagers even know what it is for? Will they go to wherever it falls and pick it and then start using it? Unlikely...

The third problem is if your context does not support your desired impact (imagine cooking with no stones). Here you might get the bed net dropped from the airplane but the parents have nothing to hang it up with on their walls so it stays unused.

So you have to design to ensure all the required behaviors actually happen. You cannot accept any proxy or intermediate indicator as enough. A classic example of this is training. You deliver the training, but the participants do not do what you trained them on. Why? Look at your design critically to find the answer!