Look At This: Daymark Foundation’s Theory of Change

Photo by Christopher Lawton from Unsplash

One of our recent partners, the Daymark Foundation, just released their new Theory of Change for Perinatal Mental Health. This work recognizes that perinatal mental health issues are more complex than many realize. Ajah worked with the Foundation over six months to help them develop their Theory of Change (TOC) and a learning agenda for their Perinatal Mental Health strategy. 

This will enable them to tie their evaluation and measurement work to specific learning questions that will help them further develop and adapt their strategy. Their TOC focuses on the two outcomes they want to see progress in in the field of perinatal mental health - decreased severity and decreased prevalence of perinatal mental health issues. Both of these outcomes are focused on a population-level, with indicators and smaller goals to move towards these outcomes built into the TOC.

The reason we want to highlight this is because it is an uncommonly good example of a theory of change that we don’t often see in the sector. Through our work across multiple sectors, we see lots of theories of change, but it is rare to see one that articulates so well what a foundation will be focusing on, the impacts they are expecting to see, and how they will understand their success - or failure. This is something that other funders should take note of as an example to follow in their own work for how to set up their strategies and how to present them. We are thrilled that we got to contribute to part of the thinking behind this work and we are excited to see what the impact of this work might be moving forward. 

To learn more about Daymark’s work on this important topic, you can visit their website.