Strategy for Programs
Written by Amy Merritt Campbell
At Elevate, we know that strong strategies drive meaningful results. But strategy isn’t one-size-fits-all—it looks different depending on whether you’re shaping a program, guiding an entire organization, or driving impact across a collaborative or community.
That’s why we’re launching this three-part strategy series, where we’ll break down practical approaches to designing and implementing strategies at each level:
Part 1: Strategy for Programs – How to build impactful, results-driven nonprofit programs.
Part 2: Strategy for Organizations – Aligning internal operations, priorities, and resources to achieve long-term goals.
Part 3: Strategy for Collaboratives & Communities – Driving collective impact through multi-stakeholder partnerships.
In this first installment, we’re focusing on program-level strategy—how to design services and interventions that are responsive, effective, and built to create lasting change.
Grounding Your Program in Data: Stakeholder Engagement & Needs Assessment
The foundation of any effective program strategy is a clear understanding of the needs, assets, and opportunities that exist in the community you’re serving. This requires both stakeholder engagement and a thorough needs assessment—two processes that go hand in hand.
The best programs are built with people, not for them. Stakeholder engagement ensures that your program reflects the voices and experiences of the people it’s intended to benefit. Meanwhile, a needs assessment helps you gather the quantitative and qualitative data needed to design a program that is both relevant and impactful.
Key steps in this process:
Gather diverse input: Involve potential participants/people with lived experience, staff, funders, and community partners through interviews, focus groups, or surveys.
Identify strengths and gaps: Use stakeholder insights alongside demographic data, service trends, and landscape research to pinpoint needs, strengths, and opportunities.
Prioritize findings: Synthesize the data to identify key themes. Look for recurring needs, common barriers, and areas where your program could make the most meaningful impact.
Pro Tips:
Tap into existing reports and datasets that already exist for your community. State agencies, local health departments, and advocacy agencies are great resources for existing information.
Don’t feel like you need to reinvent the wheel. Explore promising practices, evidence-informed interventions, and academic research to understand what’s been tried, what works, and what you might be able to adapt for your specific contexts.
Building a Solid Theory of Change: The Roadmap to Results
Once you understand the needs you aim to address, the next step is creating a Theory of Change—a clear, visual map of how your program’s activities will lead to meaningful outcomes. There are many ways to visualize your program’s theory of change, including building a logic model, but there’s no one-size-fits-all tool.
Regardless of the tool you choose, a Theory of Change should have these key elements:
Assumptions or Community Conditions: Outline relevant external factors that might impact the success of your program or service. These might include political or cultural factors or other conditions that came up during your needs assessment.
Activities: Get specific about the activities your program will employ. These activities should provide a clear outline of the services you will offer or deliver and to whom.
Outcomes: Outcomes are the changes in knowledge, skills, behavior, or conditions that occur because of the program (see the next section about building strong outcomes!).
Vision or Impact: Articulate the broader, long-term effect you aim to achieve, such as improved economic stability or health outcomes.
Pro tips:
Start with your organization’s mission or vision statement before building your theory of change, and use those statements as the “impact”. This ensures alignment of your programs to your overall mission.
Look for logical gaps in your theory of change. Do your stated activities actually lead to your target outcomes, or is there something that has to happen in the middle? Think about contribution and attribution as you build this out.
Defining Clear and Measurable Outcomes
Effective programs have clearly defined, measurable outcomes that reflect the changes you want to see in participants or the community.
To build strong, clear outcomes:
Focus on meaningful change: Outcomes should describe what will be different for participants, not just what activities will occur.
Include short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes:
Short-term outcomes reflect immediate changes, such as increased knowledge or skills.
Medium-term outcomes capture behavior or condition changes, like improved financial habits or reduced food insecurity.
Long-term outcomes represent broader impacts, such as increased economic stability or improved health.
Make them measurable: Include specific indicators that will allow you to track and assess progress.
Pro Tips:
When building your program’s outcomes, focus on what you know you can accomplish and measure. These are often shorter-term outcomes, and that’s okay!
Use research and academic literature to support the connection between your short-term outcomes (the ones you can measure and directly influence) and your desired long-term outcomes (the ones that will be harder to measure).
Testing and Iterating: Making Strategy a Living Process
The best programs and services are built over time, learning from data and experience to make adaptations toward stronger and more relevant interventions. Testing and iterating allows you to refine your approach based on real-world results, participant feedback, and evaluation data.
Ways to build flexibility into your program:
Pilot programs: Test your program on a small scale before expanding. Use the pilot to identify what works and where adjustments are needed.
Continuous feedback loops: Regularly gather input from participants and staff to refine program delivery and content.
Data-informed decision-making: Use outcome data and evaluation insights to make iterative changes and optimize the program’s effectiveness.
Pro Tips:
Designate a regular space and cadence for reviewing key metrics, reflecting on challenges, and identifying changes that need to be made. Often, a quarterly or twice-a-year reflection works well for most programs.
Build a dashboard with key metrics that let you know your program is on track. Use this dashboard to inform your program review sessions, along with qualitative data from program participants and observations from program staff.
Designing strategic, effective nonprofit programs takes more than good intentions—it requires intentional stakeholder engagement, data-informed needs assessments, and clear theories of change. By building in flexibility and regularly testing and refining, you can create programs that truly meet the needs of the people you serve.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll explore organizational-level strategy—diving into how nonprofits can align their internal operations, priorities, and resources to achieve long-term, sustainable impact.
Stay tuned, and if you’re ready to strengthen your program strategy, reach out—we’d love to help you put these principles into action.