There is a lot to negotiate and a lot to adapt, even with the general criteria of investing in social projects. It is also necessary to determine what it means to invest in social projects and the effectiveness of such investments in a particular situation. And this is where utilization-focused evaluation is needed, because it provides a dialogue with clients and helps them articulate the timing, the criteria, the degree of risk they are willing to accept, and the required level of return on investment.
Using the logic of evaluating financial instruments helps social investors understand the logic of evaluating programs.
The next question concerns the theory of transformation. What is the difference between your proposed term “theory of transformation” and theory of change?
That’s a great question! Theory of change was a concept suggested in 1995 by sociologist Carol Weiss, who observed how foundations began to implement programs without knowing what data on effectiveness the studies showed. They didn’t know about advances in social sciences, about how to fight poverty or drug addiction.
Now we have moved on to trying to change entire systems (climate, agriculture, food, healthcare). When you start changing the system, you go beyond one particular project.
The theory of change looks at an individual project or program, while the theory of transformation, trying to change systems, must consist of many different theories of change. For example, the anti-smoking campaign has more than one theory of change. You need to educate people about the dangers of smoking, work with advertising and marketing, with healthcare. You need regulations and incentives, active work with tobacco manufacturers, with young people, with the elderly.
There are many different approaches to fighting smoking, each with their own theory of change, and the theory of transformation attempts to integrate all of these different theories of change to achieve an overall systemic impact.
I think this also applies to the Blue Marble concept[8]that you’re working on right now. Could you briefly describe the main ideas of this concept?1
The Blue Marble evaluation is related to the theory of transformation: once we start dealing with large systems, we are dealing with global impacts. For example, the state of agriculture in any country is affected by climate change, world markets, government policies, the policies of international agencies, trade, and transportation. The idea behind the Blue Marble evaluation is that we need to understand not only what is happening in a particular local program, but also how that program is affected by global and international trends, such as pandemics or climate change.