The logic model, quick reference

PD doctrine defines logic models as "visual guides that outline how section activities will lead to expected changes in priority audience groups, ultimately achieving a defined objective or goal." A logic model is a template for if-then thinking: it combines inputs, audiences, and activities on one side and checks that they balance against the outputs and outcomes on the other. The Monitoring Toolkit calls it "the basis for most monitoring work."

The columns

• Inputs are the resources invested to start and sustain the effort: staff time, funding, facilities, partnerships, materials, expertise.
• Audience names the groups you want to reach and affect. This column is unique to the PD logic model, and it is there on purpose: audiences are central to PD work. Segment and prioritize audiences before you open the template, then record the result.
• Activities are the tangible actions you will take to reach the audience: the discrete tasks of a section activity, or the constituent activities of an initiative.
• Outputs are the direct, countable products of the activity: participants, workshops held, posts published.
• Short-term outcomes are effects on the audience that follow soon after the activity, such as new awareness or a drafted plan.
• Long-term outcomes build on short-term ones in sequence: awareness becomes an attitude change, a skill becomes an applied practice. The doctrine cautions that the shift "could take three weeks, or it could take three months, or even three years; the sequence is more important than the timeline."
• Assumptions record what you believe must hold true for the logic to work, such as the audience actually owning radios before you plan a radio campaign.

The distinction that carries the most weight sits between the middle columns: "Outcomes are the effects your activities had on your priority audience. In contrast, outputs are the direct products or actions that result from the section activity." Counting participants measures an output. An observable change in attitude, belief, or behavior is an outcome.

How to build one

Work backward, not left to right. The doctrine instructs teams to "start by discussing and agreeing upon the expected outcomes," then plan the other components to lead there:

1. Develop short-term and long-term outcomes, aligned with foreign policy priorities.
2. Develop outputs.
3. Brainstorm activities.
4. Record your audiences, already segmented and prioritized.
5. List inputs.
6. Document assumptions.
7. Review the whole model and test its if-then links against the doctrine's diagnostic questions: "Are there any gaps? Are there any areas where you have to rely on a lot of assumptions to proceed from the 'if' to the 'then'?"

The implementing team completes the model, consulting a diverse group of stakeholders. The work belongs to detailed planning: situation analysis, a problem statement, and audience selection come first, and the model is not a substitute for them.

Where it leads

The completed model feeds everything downstream. It seeds the initiative hypothesis, the causal claim about why the work will move the audience. It populates the monitoring plan, where each output and outcome gets an indicator, a data source, and a target. And it frames the after-action review. An indicator, in the doctrine's terms, "shows progress or change in an output or outcome from your logic model," which is why a weak model produces unmeasurable monitoring.