Resource Library for NGOs and Impact Practitioners.

Theory of change, logframes, indicators & M&E systems. Some articles are subscriber-only.

An evaluation approach suited to emergent, community-led work. Shared freely by Barefoot Guide (barefootguide.org).

A facilitation tool for deeper conversations.

Start from a community's strengths, not its needs. Shared freely by Barefoot Guide (barefootguide.org).

How to define your brand — from vision, mission and values through to visual identity and how the brand is experienced by supporters.

A downloadable Excel budget template for building the detailed budget donors almost always require, suited to small and medium programmes.

MIT: defining impact goals, building a theory of change, and planning a financially sustainable social enterprise that can grow its reach.

University of Edinburgh: the practical actions and solutions needed to address the climate challenge, from ecosystems to policy and behaviour.

A downloadable Word concept note template for the short summary donors often request as the first step in a funding application.

How to build and use a theory of change to connect activities to measurable outcomes, including running an inclusive process and communicating the model in graphics and narrative.

The types of budget, the parts of an operating budget, and how to run an inclusive process to build one for your organisation.

An introduction to digital advertising tools such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads to reach donors, volunteers and partners online.

ETH Zurich: environmental DNA (eDNA) as a modern, low-cost method for biodiversity monitoring and assessing the health of ecosystems.

The core building blocks of organisational strategy: defining the problem, understanding beneficiary needs, designing a theory of change, and setting criteria to assess progress.

Frameworks and tools for building partnerships, from identifying and assessing potential partners to negotiating and signing partnering agreements.

World Bank Group: the methods used to rigorously measure whether a programme actually causes the outcomes it claims, including impact evaluation design.

A strategy role-play exercise for teams. Shared freely by Barefoot Guide (barefootguide.org).

Where she shares free monitoring & evaluation tips regularly.

How to collect, store, manage, analyse and act on project data, and communicate findings to stakeholders. A practical follow-on for teams putting an M&E system into practice.

Practical fundraising approaches: assessing financial readiness, identifying funding sources, writing grant proposals, and running crowdfunding campaigns.

The grant itself (up to $10k/mo of free Google ads) is free from Google; these are free learning articles.

University of Alaska Fairbanks: the structure and components of a competitive grant proposal, aimed at securing funding for a project or programme.

Guidance on running qualitative interviews, from sample size and interviewer training through building rapport to coding, cleaning and thematically analysing the responses.

How to design a complete M&E system: the indicators, tools and processes needed to track whether a programme was delivered as planned and is achieving results, and how the data flows.

A short, practical team-culture tool.

A step-by-step guide to building a logframe that maps activities to outputs, outcomes and goals, including how to write indicators, means of verification, and the risks and assumptions column.

Walks through the five steps of building an M&E framework: choosing indicators, defining them precisely, setting baselines and targets, assigning responsibility, and pulling it together in a template.

Practical rules for writing clear survey questions that collect accurate data: use local language, keep each question to one issue, avoid leading wording, and account for how much people can recall.

Helps you write an honest sustainability section by identifying whether a project is a one-off intervention, a social enterprise or an ongoing programme, and what each needs to last.

The basics of people management for small organisations: shaping culture, recruiting and hiring, adapting structure as you grow, setting pay and managing performance.

University of Adelaide: the fundamentals of planning, running and delivering a project, applicable across sectors and organisation sizes.

Ten guiding principles of entrepreneurial leadership through stories and case studies — purpose, recruiting talent, managing risk and driving innovation.

Compares the two most common planning tools — a logframe tracks specific activities and outputs in a matrix, while a theory of change gives a broader view of how and why change happens — and helps you decide which to use.

How to construct a project budget, track and analyse expenditure, and communicate about finances across a team, with an emphasis on donor compliance. From FHI 360.

SDG Academy: building practical monitoring, evaluation and learning systems — framed around climate adaptation but applicable to environmental and community programmes generally.

MindEdge: the core communications work of a nonprofit, from messaging and media relations to communicating clearly with internal and external audiences.

Weekly sector news and interviews, free.

Build your own M&E plan: how M&E links to project design, choosing indicators, selecting data-collection methods, and assigning roles. From FHI 360.

Why organisations need formal policies, and seven essentials — from a code of conduct to grievance and accountability procedures — plus the standard components every policy should contain.

University of Alaska Fairbanks: the planning that precedes a grant application — identifying funders, defining need, and building the project design.

A downloadable Word proposal template for small to medium programmes when a donor has not supplied their own format, with guidance on when to use it. Creative Commons licensed.

Cornell University: how scientists study and conserve sharks and their relatives, using real field and lab research to teach biodiversity and conservation methods.

Harvard University: how social entrepreneurs design innovative solutions, build effective organisations, and collaborate to change the systems that create social and environmental problems.

A narrative framework for turning facts into stories that move audiences to act, including tailoring stories to different audiences and building a reusable story bank.

University of Michigan: crafting stories that build empathy and drive action, for people communicating a cause or mission.

Sheela Patel on community-owned data collection.

A ten-step process that integrates M&E with project design, running from needs analysis and stakeholder mapping through theory of change and indicators to data analysis and reporting.

Doug Reeler's widely-used model of how social change actually happens.

A field-tested process for working through complex change.

An 8-page deck by Ann-Murray Brown, hosted openly by Prevention Collaborative.

A round-up of M&E resources and platforms — indicator libraries, results-based handbooks, and social-impact and data-visualisation tools — with notes on which suit different project sizes.

Wheatley & Frieze on how small local efforts scale through networks.

An introduction to theory of change: what it is, why it helps with planning and evaluation, and its core components — long-term outcomes, preconditions, assumptions and the pathway of change.

Free guides across analytics, SEO, ads, email & social.

The Barefoot Guide method for writing real stories of change.