The organizational logic model: A powerful tool for guiding strategic planning and organizational performance assessment

Abstract

A logic model can be a simple and powerful tool for a nonprofit organization to use in assessing their effectiveness, articulating their value, and guiding the path to the future. While nonprofits often develop logic models at the individual program level, it is less common to create logic models at the organizational level. Furthermore, logic modeling is typically done as a one-time exercise, and the resulting model is often not used to its full potential for organizational planning, decision-making, and evaluation.

This workshop will share a toolkit for developing an organization-level logic model that incorporates your agency’s mission, vision, and values, and articulates how individual programs and services contribute to your agency’s ultimate aims. We will review common logic model components and terminology, and will present an organizational logic model template along with steps for collaboratively developing your model with a group of stakeholders. We will share strategies for using the logic model to assess mission drift, identify synergies and gaps in your programming, and focus strategic planning efforts. We will also share tools for using the logic model to guide organizational performance assessment and optimize your evaluation and data collection efforts.