The Art of Nonprofit Program Creation

Your program narrative and logic model are instruments of alignment, ensuring that your team shares a common vision and is rowing in the same direction.

For growing nonprofits navigating constrained resources and increasing fundraising demands, effective program planning can take center stage.

A well-designed program serves as a guiding narrative, illustrating how your organization’s collective efforts - including staff, volunteer, partners, and donors - will make a meaningful impact. Documenting a program should be evidence-based, drawing insights both from your internal team and the communities impacted by your work.

Program narrative and logic models answer the fundamental questions of “what are we doing and where are we headed?” They should be widely shared across your organization to orient and align your board and staff. Furthermore, they are the basis for compelling grant applications and enable program evaluation and strategic program evolution. 

So, how does one embark on this journey?

These firefighters are on the same page about their program theory.

Step 1: Identifying Your Problem and Program Theory – The Genesis of Impact
​Program design should start with a clear problem that you are trying to solve and program theory that positions your organization’s work as the solution. Your program theory should illustrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship between what you do and the change you aim to achieve. You and your team should ask:

• What is the core problem or challenge we are uniquely able to address or overcome?
• What is the simple message of causation connecting the activities we have in mind and goal? 
• Who are the stakeholders we need to weigh in on our program theory?
• What further research do we need to do? 

Take, for instance, the multifaceted Protect Coyote Valley campaign that I worked on during my tenure at Green Foothills. The program theory we created was succinct and powerful: “We believe that if people in our region knew where Coyote Valley was and that it was at risk, they would work to protect it and decision makers would listen.” 

We developed this program theory as a team with our partners and the guided support of experienced communication professionals. While not the sole strategy, increasing public awareness and community engagement was one of our organization’s unique contributions to the campaign.

I’ve found the best program theories to be challenging to uncover, yet glaringly obvious and straightforward once you do, as it is going to be the drumbeat you tell your staff, board, volunteers, partners, and funders. Do the research, engage key stakeholders, take your time, and have patience when you’re doing this step.

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Like a network or energy grid, all of your outcomes, outputs, and inputs should connect and support each other.

Step 2: Crafting a Clear Logic Model: Outcomes, Outputs, and Inputs
With your program theory as your guiding compass, it's time to build the structural framework of your program. Picture this as assembling the scaffolding for a grand structure - outcomes, outputs, and inputs intricately intertwined to support your grand vision and prove whether your program theory is accurate.

Defining the Elements:

• Outcomes: Observable and measurable changes or benefits resulting from your program's activities. They are often results you have little direct control over and dependent on others you are trying to influence or help. Achieving your outcomes are the evidence that your program theory was correct. For the campaign to protect Coyote Valley, an example would be that elected officials vote for protections for Coyote Valley.
• Outputs: Tangible program activities that are the results that you have control over and are not meaningful goals on their own but, hopefully, drive your outcomes. For the campaign to protect Coyote Valley, examples of outputs might include the number of people that sign a petition, OpEds published in the paper, or the number of public comment letters sent.
• Inputs: Resources needed for your program to drive your outputs. These are the basis for budgets and will often include the cost of staff time required from specific employees, funding needed for consultants, or the cost of materials.

Translating the identified program theory into measurable outcomes, outputs, and inputs is the cornerstone of creating a clear and compelling program. These elements logically flow through one another to form the structure through which the program's theory is tested and, hopefully, realized. 

Outcomes, outputs, and inputs will be the basis for your grant applications and program evaluation. You’ll find the outcomes helpful for reporting to your board of directors and senior level staff, the outputs will help you in designing work plans, and inputs are essential for accurate budget planning.

Once you’ve completed creating your problem statement, program theory, and logic model, this is a good time to have a team meeting to get feedback and refine. It’s worth taking the time to workshop these with the people who will be doing the work, the people overseeing the work, and the communities impacted by your work.

​Step 3: Weaving a Story of Impact – Crafting the Program Narrative
Once your program outcomes, outputs, and inputs are finalized, bring the program to life with a compelling narrative. The sections I’ve found most important to create are: 1) Problem and Program Theory (detailed in step 1) and 2) Program Description which Illustrates the history of your program and how your organization got to this moment.
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Imagine your program as a protagonist on a hero's journey, with the audience eagerly awaiting the tale of impact. While the outcomes, outputs, and inputs you identified in step 2 are usually just in an outlined format, the narrative tells a story in paragraph form. It should bridge your problem statement, program theory, organization’s history, and program logic model together, explaining why now is the time for your program.

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Step 4. Confirm, Does it All Line Up?
Now it’s time to read through it all. Board members and staff who haven’t been deeply involved in the creation process can often be the best editors. You’ve invested a significant amount of time in creating this document and a fresh perspective can help to ensure you’ve told a coherent story.

Your program Narrative and Logic Model will look a little like this:

Section 1. Narrative

• Problem and Program Theory: Describes the problem you're trying to solve and your theory about your organization’s contribution
• Program Description: Illustrates the history of your program, how you got to this moment, and brings your program logic model to life

Section 2. Logic Model

• Outcomes: Observable and measurable changes or benefits resulting from the program's activities 
• Outputs: Tangible and immediate results of program activities
• Inputs: Budget, or staff time, volunteer time, and materials needed 

Step 5: Start Implementing and evaluating
You’ll likely want to update your program narrative and logic model at least 1-2 times a year. 

You also want to create an evaluation schedule, perhaps quarterly, to confirm the resources you’ve spent, the work done, and the progress toward goals. Ask yourself, your board and staff, and your stakeholders, “what is working?” and “what can be improved?"

Sometimes there are no clear next steps. Often, the answer is to keep moving forward anyway.

Normalize challenges
It’s quite likely your organization will face several challenges during the program design and implementation process. This is totally normal. If the impact you are trying to create was easy to achieve, someone would have likely figured it out already. Your team is there to persist, especially when times get hard. Below are some actions you can take to avoid or overcome common challenges.

• Identify the people on your team who are entrepreneurs and visionaries, and have the propensity to innovate and quickly shift course. They may find it challenging to maintain a consistent focus. Establish a practice of balancing the need to consider new ideas but also stick with your shared work.

• Take the time to identify and celebrate small wins. Often your big win is many years or even a generation or two in the future, make sure you have wins along the way to celebrate and come together as a community and team to maintain momentum and excitement.
• Ensure everyone on your team has a shared understanding of the difference between "outcomes," "outputs," and "inputs" for effective communication and goal alignment.
• Engage with key stakeholders so that your program is created and implemented with diverse perspectives to ensure the program is relevant and addresses broad needs.
• Establish your system for collecting data and measuring outcomes so you know how you will evaluate your program before you start implementing it.
• Give yourself and your team some grace. Be flexible and adaptable, address challenges as they come. Stay the course.

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Conclusion
​Resources are almost always scarce for nonprofits and effective program planning emerges as the cornerstone for success.

The steps outlined above play a crucial role in sculpting the grand structure of a nonprofit program, connecting inputs, outputs, outcomes, and, most importantly, the overarching program theory.

As you embark on this journey, remember the power of clarity. Your program narrative and logic model are not just documents; they are instruments of alignment, ensuring that every stakeholder, from board members and staff to funds and beneficiaries, shares a common vision and are all rowing in the same direction.

As you follow these steps, remember, the process may seem daunting initially, but with each strategic flex, your program muscles grow stronger and this way of thinking becomes more intuitive. Taking your time in program theory and design is a testament to your commitment to creating meaningful change.

So, here's to crafting programs that resonate, drive change, and stand as beacons of impact. May your nonprofit journey be as transformative as the programs you design. Cheers to the power of strategic program muscles and the enduring impact they bring!

We all stand to learn from one another! What do you think of this process? What has worked best for you?