As part of our ongoing series highlighting how learning and evaluation (L&E) informs our grantmaking strategies, this blog post delves deeper into Theories of Action (ToA)—tools used to help ECMC Foundation articulate its role in making change happen within a specific area of the postsecondary ecosystem. Read on to learn more about ToAs—what they are, how they’re developed and the role they play in guiding strategy, learning and communication.

In late 2022, ECMC Foundation announced a new strategic framework focused on systematic change within postsecondary education. In addition to reserving funds for strategically responsive grants and investments, ECMC Foundation also identified initiatives in which the Foundation has allocated multi-year investments. Developing a theory of action (ToA) for each became an integral part of the initiative development process. For this blog post, we look specifically at the role of ToAs in the context of our Foundation initiatives, though we also are in the process of developing a ToA for our Strategically Responsive portfolio.

Theories of action are tools that make thinking visible by articulating the expected impact of our grantmaking and investing under a specific initiative. At the Foundation, we use ToAs as design tools that build consensus across multiple stakeholders about the direction and implementation of an initiative. They’re also tools that guide the design and implementation of an evaluation.

To better understand how ToAs work, it helps to know their components.

Delving Deeper: Theory of Action Components

ToAs have three main components: (1) an overarching goal, (2) strategies and activities, and (3) outcomes. Let’s examine each one more closely.

Component #1: The Overarching Goal

A critical aspect of an initiative’s ToA is its overarching goal—the effort’s long-term vision. For ECMC Foundation, these are aspirational changes within the postsecondary ecosystem that drive equitable outcomes for students and support our North Star. When possible, overarching goals quantify the long-term changes that an initiative intends to make.

Overarching goals are not necessarily attributable to the work of our grantee partners and their funded projects; instead, they reflect longer-term changes to which an initiative’s efforts contribute. They serve as benchmarks that help us understand how things currently stand and help us track how things are changing over time. 

Example: Single Mother Student Success Initiative

To highlight one example, the overarching goal of our Single Mother Student Success Initiative is to: Transform the postsecondary ecosystem to increase associate degree attainment rates for single mother students to 25% within six years of enrolling at a community college by December 2025. We landed on this goal for the initiative based on data from 2019 when the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17), which found that 12% of single mother students earned an associate degree within six years of enrolling in a community college, nearly double the rate (7%) reported in 2011 based on the previous study (BPS:04/09), but still less than the rate for all students (18%) to complete an AA. With more targeted and robust funding and increased attention, ECMC Foundation believed that doubling the rate again, to 25%, by 2027 (the next time NCES will release longitudinal study findings) was ambitious yet attainable. Our evaluation partner for the initiative, Education Northwest, is helping us track progress towards this goal.

Component #2: Strategies and Activities

Another important aspect of a ToA is the planned strategies and activities that aim to make progress toward an initiative’s overarching goal. Each ECMC Foundation initiative typically identifies 3-4 focused strategies that reflect chosen points of intervention for advancing systemic change in their area of the postsecondary ecosystem.

Example: Common Themes Across Strategies and Activities

In looking at the distinct strategies funded across our initiatives, there are some common themes that model what this ToA component looks like:

• Strengthening Practice. Funding innovative programs and scaling effective practices.
• Capacity Building. Building the capacity of institutions, community-based organizations and field leaders.
• Data and Research. Developing data infrastructure and strengthening capacity to collect, track and analyze data to generate insights and improve programming.
• Building Partnerships and Connections. Creating networks, reducing siloes and supporting the alignment of efforts across postsecondary stakeholders.
• Field Building and Increasing Awareness. Contributing to and shaping a public discourse influencing beliefs or assumptions about higher education.
• Informing Policy. Supporting resource flows and policy priorities across institutions and at the local, state and federal levels.

Component #3: Outcomes

The final component within every ToA is a set of defined short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes. For ECMC Foundation, these articulate anticipated changes that will happen among learners, institutions/community-based organizations or in the wider postsecondary ecosystem because of our funded strategies and activities. Outcomes must logically flow from strategies and activities, should be realistic and reasonable, and when possible, should be informed by research and existing literature. Short-term outcomes (1-2 years) directly result from implementation of funded activities and happen first. Mid-term outcomes (3-4 years) bring into focus the changes or new conditions that enable longer-term outcomes (5+ years) and an initiative’s overarching goal. The table below shows examples of outcomes that align with specific strategies that could be included in a ToA.

 Example Outcomes

Crafting the Right Tool: How We Develop ToAs

ToAs cannot be developed in one day – the process takes time and involves multiple working sessions that bring together a cross-section of stakeholders with their own insights, hypotheses and expertise.

Additionally, there is not one way to develop a ToA – though ECMC Foundation’s process and thinking was strongly influenced by the Annie. E Casey Foundation’s Guide on Theories of Change. This resource provided step-by-step guidance that helped us think about how to sequence ToA development and provided helpful templates and examples to spur thinking. Today, we begin the ToA process by working to articulate our overarching goal, followed by identifying which strategies and activities we hypothesize will make progress towards that goal and finally identifying outcomes to measure progress along the way.

Throughout the course of the ToA development process, it is important to think about whose voices and views are included to ensure different perspectives are explored and addressed. In addition to engaging the voices of those leading the initiative, we aim to share ToAs with other staff, field experts and grantees for feedback and thoughts when possible.

Pulling It All Together: How Theories of Action Support Our Work

At ECMC Foundation, we consider ToAs as one tool in a larger toolkit of approaches and methods to help prioritize, reflect, and evaluate our work.  We use ToAs to support:

• Strategy – The process of developing a ToA can help teams clarify ideas, explore different viewpoints and increase agreement and alignment about strategy. ToAs provide guidance for where an initiative team should invest time and Foundation resources. A ToA may function like a strategic plan and is most useful when referred to often for guidance and reflection.
• Evaluation and Learning – ToAs are also essential tools for our evaluation partners. They help guide evaluation questions, methods and the creation of frameworks for measuring progress throughout an initiative’s lifecycle. These evaluations, in turn, build evidence for where we are or are not making progress—enabling teams to make adjustments as necessary.
• Communications – ToAs also promote transparency in our grantmaking. They send a clear message to current and future grantees, peer funders and the wider philanthropic/higher education field about what ECMC Foundation seeks to fund across our initiatives, what impact we are working towards in the field and our point of view for how change will happen.

Currently, all ECMC Foundation initiatives are working to articulate their Theories of Action. Two of our initiatives have already completed this work and have published high-level information on our website:

• Basic Needs Initiative
• Single Mother Student Success Initiative