By Jack Crawford, b.world Engineer
Hello and welcome to b.woah!, where I talk about the development process behind b.world.
When developing a new impact project, it’s important to hypothesize how you intend to reach the goal you are setting out to achieve... for example, “to reach X goal, we need to do Y, but for Y to happen, we need to promote Z, etc. etc.“
As you collaborate to define this model, you’ll produce a logical framework, also known as a logic model or a ✨ logframe ✨.
There are plenty of different terms and naming conventions used in logframe development across the nonprofit and social impact sectors. This lack of standardization is a challenge that makes sharing and collective learning difficult not only between teams but across the impact space as a whole. After conducting research with a global group of subject matter experts from nonprofits, foundations, government funders, and technology providers, we settled on the following:
Goals are the impact level change - they should describe the highest level of change your project seeks to achieve or contribute to. Goals result in meaningful, longer-term, and cumulative changes.
Objectives are the outcome level change - they should be specific changes in behaviors, attitudes, knowledge, processes, etc. Achieving Objectives leads to achieving a Goal.
Activities are the things you'll do to achieve outputs - they are specific actions, have start and end dates, result in immediate, attributable outputs. Activities are carried out to support Objectives.
Indicators are the quantitative metrics used to measure specific results. Indicators can be linked to Activities, Objectives, and Goals.
Insights are qualitative and narrative information that can be linked to any of the above levels! I wrote about Insights in the last b.woah here.
In our research, we noted that while there are plenty of free and accessible templates for documenting logframes, most don't facilitate collaboration, none connect back to strategy or forward to storytelling, and almost none of them are easy to use. b.world solves these issues with whiteboards!
Every project has a Project Whiteboard where you can drag and drop logframe elements (Goals, Objectives, Activities, Indicators) onto the whiteboard to visually define your Logframe:
After dragging, dropping, and following the b.world Logframe model, here’s a finished whiteboard with two Goals, each with their own Objectives, Activities and Indicators!
Once you’re satisfied with the whiteboard model as a starting point for your Logframe (remember, you can add more elements at any time), tap or click the “Add to Logframe”! button:
With the click of a button, your visual model will be translated to a structured Logframe with Goals, Objectives, Activities and Indicators all laid out, ready for the work to begin!
This time-saving link between b.world's Whiteboard and Logframe will dramatically improve your ability to transition from program design to implementation and storytelling.
To start building your impact framework, try b.world today!