Case Study

Supporting social enterprises: REDF

Delivering on an intended mission or goal is one of the main reasons organizations employ Theories of Change. Project Evident’s work with the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF)—a funder that supports the work of employment-focused social enterprises or ESEs with the goal of improving outcomes for citizens who face major barriers to employment—was based on the desire to grow into a scalable, nationwide provider of services. 

After identifying their goals and determining their vision, the team at Project Evident worked with them to develop a theory of change that will inform the next four years of their organizational strategy, and set in place a framework for planning, executing and measuring the impact of the changes their team plans to make in order to to better serve and expand the number of organizations they work with.  

The process allowed them to think more clearly about how they provide funding to their grantees, how they could enter into and provide assistance in more communities where there are organizations doing ESE work, and how to best assist the organizations they work with in thinking about collecting data and evidence.

As a result of working with Project Evident, REDF was able to identify the problems they want to solve in the long term, and produce actionable steps for the short and long term. This work included a commitment to exploring ways to better express their narrative; and as an organization they have committed to developing a logic model and learning agenda that guides data collection techniques and evidence building.