The assessment must be anchored in a clearly articulated purpose and causal logic.
Without a coherent theory of change, impact assessment becomes an exercise in data collection without direction. A report may measure dozens of indicators — training sessions conducted, beneficiaries reached, funds disbursed — and still tell us nothing about whether actual change occurred, or why.
The Theory of Change is the backbone of any credible impact assessment. It articulates what the intervention intended to achieve, through what mechanisms, under what assumptions, and in what timeframe. When this backbone is missing or weak, everything that follows — methodology, data collection, analysis, attribution — lacks a coherent anchor.
The Standard requires: Clear articulation of the problem statement and contextual baseline, explicit objectives of the CSR intervention, a documented Theory of Change or Results Framework, and disclosure of assumptions and external factors influencing outcomes.
The difference between strong and weak application of this principle is visible even in how a report opens. Consider these two approaches to framing a rural sanitation programme:
"The project aimed to improve sanitation in rural communities. 500 toilets were constructed across 12 villages. Training was provided to community health workers. The project reached an estimated 15,000 beneficiaries."
This describes activity. It provides no theory of how toilet construction leads to health outcomes, what assumptions underpin the logic, or what "improvement" actually means in context.
"Open defecation in the target villages was linked to recurring diarrhoeal disease, particularly among children under five. The intervention hypothesised that household toilet access, combined with behaviour-change communication, would shift sanitation practices. This assumed community willingness to adopt new practices and local government maintenance support."
This establishes a causal chain: problem → mechanism → expected change, with explicit assumptions that can be tested and evaluated.
The Standard does not prescribe a single methodology. For this principle, the following approaches are appropriate, depending on the nature and scale of the intervention:
Visual representations mapping inputs → activities → outputs → outcomes → impact, with identified assumptions at each stage.
More sophisticated mapping of causal pathways, particularly useful when multiple mechanisms interact or compete.
When interventions operate in highly complex or emergent settings, narrative articulation of intent and expected mechanisms may be more appropriate than formal models.
Measurable benchmarks tied to each stage of the theory of change, enabling tracking of whether the hypothesised mechanisms are functioning.
Based on patterns observed across CSR impact reports, the most frequent weaknesses under this principle include:
Retrofitted theories of change. Reports that clearly constructed their theory of change after the assessment was complete, rather than using it to guide the assessment design. These are recognisable by their generic language and perfect alignment with results — a theory of change that exactly matches what was found is not a theory; it is a summary.
Conflating outputs with outcomes. Statements such as "the programme impacted 15,000 lives" when what is actually measured is the number of people who received a service. Receipt of a service is an output, not an outcome or impact.
Missing assumptions. Every theory of change depends on assumptions about how the world works — that communities will adopt new practices, that trained workers will remain in their roles, that market conditions will hold. Reports that fail to state these assumptions cannot evaluate whether their theory of change was valid.
"A theory of change is not a diagram you produce for the donor report. It is the intellectual discipline of making your causal assumptions explicit — so they can be tested, challenged, and learned from."— Advisory Body Commentary
When the Accreditation Committee reviews a report against this principle, they look for evidence of the following: