Logic Models and Evaluation Plans for Grants

Funders read the logic model and the evaluation plan to answer one question: does this organisation know the difference between doing activities and changing something. A logic model that lists outputs as outcomes fails that test on sight, and an evaluation plan that promises outcomes nobody is assigned to measure fails it a page later.

The two instruments in this cluster are built to prevent exactly those failures. The logic model template keeps inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact in separate columns, with the arrow tests that expose a jump in logic before a reviewer finds it. The evaluation plan template gives every promised outcome an indicator, a baseline, a target, a collection method, an owner and a schedule, so a promise with no owner is visibly incomplete. Both templates are free downloads.

These documents sit inside a larger sequence: the needs statement and narrative in proposal development state the problem and the program, and the budget cluster prices what the logic model commits to. The Nonprofit Grant Proposal System teaches how the two instruments connect, with worked examples carried end to end.