Designing Pathways for Change

Why do well intentioned social enterprises fail to achieve their impact goals?

It is common knowledge that many community initiatives, services, and programs geared to solve social problems never reach their full potential. In a study conducted by the Failure Institute on 115 for-profit social enterprises in Mexico who have experienced failure, these are the commonalities that they found:

1. Lack of resources and infrastructure. This is defined by the lack of support funds for social entrepreneurs, as well as ignorance as to how to get funded and the lack of skills to integrate projects to obtain social funds.
2. Context. The environment in which they operate is often not ideal because public policies have not advanced at the same speed as social enterprises. For instance, in Mexico there is no special legal designation for social enterprises.
3. The board of directors. In most social enterprises, the board is constituted of founding partners. It was surprising to learn that this tends to be perceived as a source of conflict, from a lack of clarity, confusion in the definition of responsibilities and lack of commitment of the founding partners, to the presence of interpersonal conflicts between members.

Cut Through the Fog and Get Clarity!

A Theory of Change is a roadmap that clarifies your purpose, shows the causal relationships that lead to value creation and powerfully communicates to the world how your presence is going to make a difference.

A ‘theory of change’ explains how activities are understood to produce a series of results that contribute to achieving the final intended impacts. It can be developed for an event, a project, a programme, a policy, a strategy, an organization or for communities. A theory of change can be used for strategic planning or programme/policyplanning to identify the current situation (in terms of needs and opportunities), the intended situation and what needs to be done to move from one to the other. This can help to design more realistic goals, clarify accountabilities and establish a common understanding of the strategies to be used to achieve the goals.

Mapping your theory of change for your community is the first step in making your impact goals visible and how you envision to address them. But before we get into the Theory of Change, Let us first be clear on your own intentions. 

As a driver of change, why do you want to build this community? What different paradigms drive you? And what is the change that you are guiding people to? 

In this masterclass, we will explore the elements of designing your pathway for change for your community or organization and use tools to reconnect with our intentions, envision the future and redesign possibilities.