Empower, Innovate, Advocate: Transform’s Theory of Change
An essential part of creating our strategic plan was clearly defining Transform’s theory of change.
What is a theory of change?
A theory of change describes how and why an organization’s work will lead to outcomes and impacts. But a robust theory of change is more than just a description. Our theory of change will help define and guide our work as we make choices about what to pursue. It will help us answer the question of how our programs and advocacy will achieve the social transformation we seek.
We ground-truth our policy advocacy work in lived experience. We have the authentic relationships to build a powerful movement — grassroots, grasstops, and everything in between. We lift up voices and include community leaders as we innovate and shape policy.
A model for change in a nimble organization
Transform has always been defined by responsiveness to communities and a sense of experimentation and creativity. That has enabled us to pilot some groundbreaking programs: We’ve been pioneers in bringing sustainable, affordable, responsive mobility options into affordable housing through our Mobility Hubs program, for example, and our Alameda County Safe Routes to Schools program was the first of its kind in such an economically diverse area, serving many equity priority communities. Our creative and responsive approach has also positioned us at the cutting edge of conversations around parking policy, transit-oriented communities, and other transportation and land use policies at the intersection of equity and sustainability.
Today, we continue to be a nimble and flexible organization that is working to solve the twin crises of housing and transportation in creative ways — collaborating with many partners, responding to opportunities, and continually aiming to create impactful policies and programs that will move the needle on the climate crisis and inequality.
The puzzle posed by having so many different kinds of programs and advocacy efforts is how we understand our work: What is the change we’re trying to make, and what are the steps along the way? What outcomes do we hope to achieve as we work toward forestalling the climate crisis’ worst impacts and creating a more just and equitable Bay Area and California?
This answer to that puzzle is our theory of change.
This graphic, which is part of our strategic plan, lays out in a visual way how our work feeds into near-term outcomes, how those shape progressively longer-term outcomes, and how those long-term outcomes influence our two major goals: to create a more equitable Bay Area and California and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — ultimately leading to social transformation.
Charting the course toward a better world
When I look at our theory of change, I sometimes wish the diagram didn’t have so darned many boxes and arrows. But the reality is that our work and its impacts are complex and interwoven. If you take a few minutes to read all the boxes and follow the arrows, I hope you’ll see what we’re working toward and how we plan to get there.
Often, Transform’s strategies feed into one another across our different approaches — empower, innovate, and advocate. For example, as we cultivate the next generation of advocacy leaders through our Safe Routes program (“empower”), we begin to change our cultural narratives around transportation (“innovate”). Those narratives then feed into and support our campaigns (“advocate”). If we had captured every single way that our strategies and activities intersect and feed into one another, we would have had a tangled mess, so we used arrows strategically to point out some of the key synergies.
What most excites me about Transform’s theory of change is how it illustrates those intersections. We could simplify and become an organization that just focuses on one strategy, but what makes Transform special is the very structure of the intertwined threads of our work.
We ground-truth our policy advocacy work in lived experience. We have the authentic relationships to build a powerful movement — grassroots, grasstops, and everything in between. We lift up voices and include community leaders as we innovate and shape policy.
Visualizing this flow from our on-the-ground activities through outcomes and to our ultimate goal inspires me and our team. I hope it inspires you too.
