Charitology
Tool · For nonprofits and funders

Impact Measurement Toolkit

Build a theory of change from the problem and its source to outcomes and indicators, with feedback from the people served, a comparison plan and a stop rule. Keep several drafts and export them as Markdown or JSON.

Live

Build a theory of change

Drafts are saved only in this browser.

Jump to the preview
1. The problem and its source
What people experience, in plain words. This is the symptom.
What produces the problem. Keep asking why it happens until you reach something your work could change.
The depth scale describes where work acts, from relief to source. It doesn’t grade: every level is needed.
2. What you do and what it produces
What the program does: services, events, campaigns, tools.
The direct products of the activities, which you can count: sessions held, people reached, items delivered.
3. What should change

Outcomes are changes in people’s lives, behavior, knowledge or conditions, not the work itself.

What changes first.
What the first changes lead to.
The lasting change you are aiming for.
4. How you’ll know: indicators

For each change you want to track: what you will measure, how, when, where you start and where you hope to be.

5. Guardrails
What must be true for each link in the chain to hold. These are the first things to check.
How the people you serve will tell you what is working, and how you will tell them what changed as a result.
How you will tell your effect from what would have happened anyway: a randomized or waiting-list comparison, a similar group or place, or at least a before-and-after with its limits stated.
The result that would make you change course, decided now, before the results arrive.
Who checks this plan and its results, ideally someone outside the program.

Related open tool. Systemic Altruism’s outcome and evidence planner asks similar questions, adds an optional cost scenario and also keeps drafts only in your browser.

How it works

Fill in the parts of a theory of change in any order and watch the chain build itself in the preview: the problem people experience, the source that produces it, what the program does, what that produces, and what should change in the short, medium and long term. Then add the parts that keep a plan honest: indicators with a baseline and a target, the assumptions the chain rests on, how the people served will give feedback, how you will compare results with what would have happened anyway, the result that would make you change course, and who reviews it.

The preview lists what is still missing, as prompts rather than a score. Drafts are saved only in this browser. Keep as many as you like, and export any of them as Markdown to share or JSON to import again later. Load example adds a fictional program, Millbrook Reading Circles, as a separate draft, so you can see how the parts fit together.

The method

A theory of change starts from the long-term goal and works backward through the conditions that must hold for it to happen, as the Center for Theory of Change describes. This toolkit adds a step before that: separating the problem people experience from its source, and asking where on the depth scale your work acts. Relief and source work are both needed. The point is to know which one you are doing, the treatment for the Symptom Trap.

It keeps outputs and outcomes apart. In the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s logic model guide, outputs are the direct products of activities, and outcomes are changes in participants’ behavior, knowledge, skills, status or level of functioning. Outputs are easier to count. Even the Form 990 asks charities to describe accomplishments in measures such as clients served. The distance between the two is the Measurement Gap.

Three guardrails keep the plan honest. A comparison is needed because a program’s effect is the difference between what happened and what would have happened without it, which J-PAL calls the counterfactual. Feedback from the people served treats them as experts on their own lives. Listen4Good’s five-step model ends by reporting back to the people who answered, which is how the Missing Feedback Loop starts to close and the Missing Voice starts to count. A stop rule, written before the results arrive, makes it easier to act on them honestly.

For a second view of the same questions, Systemic Altruism’s outcome and evidence planner is a related open tool. It adds an optional cost scenario.

What it isn’t

It isn’t an evaluation, and it doesn’t judge whether a plan is good. A complete-looking theory of change can still be wrong, which is why the assumptions, the comparison and the reviewer matter. The prompts are suggestions, and a small program may reasonably leave some parts simple. Nothing you write leaves your browser unless you download it.

Sources

  1. What is Theory of Change? · Center for Theory of Change, 2026 · Undated page, accessed October 2026.
  2. Logic Model Development Guide · W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004 · Defines outputs, outcomes and impact. Copy hosted by NACCHO.
  3. Introduction to randomized evaluations · Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), 2023
  4. Realizing the Promise of High-Quality Feedback · Juan Clavijo and Melinda Tuan, Feedback Labs, 2021
  5. Closing the Feedback Loop · Kristine Wong, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2016
  6. Instructions for Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax (2025) · Internal Revenue Service, 2025 · Part III asks for accomplishments in measures such as clients served.
  7. Outcome and evidence planner · Systemic Altruism, 2026 · Accessed October 2026.