Tools & Resources

This resource introduces 3 tools from service design, evaluation and start-up thinking that can be important in creating sustainability in the long term: Theory of Change; Business Model Canvas; and Service Blueprint.

Developmental Evaluation (DE) can be used to evaluate innovative initiatives in complex, dynamic environments, including a range of fields and international settings. Here is a webinar from the Tamarack Institute featuring M.Q. Patton and Mark Cabaj discussing Developmental Evaluation.

For a really useful explanation on the difference between shared measurement and evaluation, read the following blog. 

This resource is a field guide to the use of participatory and other research tools by Aboriginal research practitioners in Australia.

This resource provides a framework for considering ethics, privacy and safety when engaging community members in design, research and evaluation activities.

A paper by Mark Cabaj on evaluating scaling efforts.

A good resource for evaluation is the Better Evaluation website. It offers information and links to many evaluation approaches, methods and tools. This website has been developed for program evaluation principally and you should therefore consider how you select and apply these resources to…

The August Wilson Red Door Project's ground-breaking production of Evolve is about racial profiling but from a multiplicity of perspectives. In this video, Artistic Director Kevin E. Jones explores what it meant to create the conditions for change.

This resource can help you deepen your understanding of facilitation.

This resource provides detailed instructions for practitioners to create an actor map, which is a visual depiction of the key organizations and individuals that influence a topic or system.

A 3-part series of downloadable handbooks that walks partners through the process of assessing progress and impact, provides case studies and examples, and sample questions, outcomes and indicators FSG guide for assessing progress and impact with example outcomes and indicators.

This tool will help you to identify what you are trying to achieve, how you will achieve it, how you will know you’ve made a difference, and how you will continuously adapt and improve your practice.  

This tool will help you to identify: • Factors that have contributed to the change you seek. • Evidence demonstrating the contribution. • The strength of the contribution. • Identify new means of and opportunities to exercise leadership.

This resource provides an introduction to social innovation processes that will help you rapidly test your assumptions in a cost-effective way.

This resource explains how identifying and understanding ‘positive deviance’ will help you understand the kind of solutions that can work in your community – with the resources that are already in place.

This resource describes different types of insight, the attributes of a good insight, the place of insights in design processes, and how to create stronger insights.