USING RESULTS AND BENCHMARKS TO SUPPORT
LST SUSTAINABILITY
Figure A: Guide to Terms and Definitions
What Do You Want to Sustain?
How Will You Measure Your Progress?
VISION AND DESIRED RESULTS
INDICATORS
The overall long-term vision and goals for the
LST initiative.
Measures that quantify and track community-wide
progress toward results. Indicators help initiatives
understand the context in which they operate, and
whether the combined efforts of multiple initiatives are
creating desired changes across a school, school
district, or community.
CONDITIONS AND CAUSES
The conditions, causes, circumstances,
factors, and issues that need to change in
order to achieve the results. The initiative will
probably address some subset of these
conditions or causes, but not all of them.
Ultimate Indicators
Measures of long-term progress toward desired
results. They usually require significant investment
and time to change.
Interim Indicators
Measures of short-term or interim progress toward
desired results.
STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES
PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Strategies
The broad approaches that the LST initiative
will pursue to change its chosen subset of
conditions and causes.
Measures that reflect how the initiative is
implementing the strategies and activities to the left,
and what effects the strategies and activities are
having on the target population. Performance
measures help initiative leaders answer the question:
“What contribution, if any, are we making toward
achieving the desired results?”
Activities
The actions, services, and interventions that
the initiative will undertake to implement the
above strategies.
Measures of Effect
Changes in the target populations that come about as
a result of strategies and activities. Measures of effect
often reflect changes in knowledge, skills, attitude, or
behavior.
Measures of Effort
Direct outputs of program activities—what and how
much the program accomplishes. Measures of effort
can include, for example, the number of classes,
trainings offered, or measures of student satisfaction.
1
You can see that completing the left side of the logic model involves
answering the question, “What do you want to sustain?” and the right
side involves answering the question, “How will you measure your
progress toward your desired results?” We guide you through the
process of completing the process below, starting with the left column
and moving counterclockwise in five steps, as shown in the figure
below.1
Figure B: PROCESS FOR LINKING VISION AND RESULTS
What Do You Want To
Sustain?
How Will You
Measure Your
Progress?
One benefit of
completing this
process is that it
provides an
opportunity to
consider what you
can realistically
expect to achieve,
based on the
strategies and
activities that you
implement. This can
help you avoid overcommitting or
agreeing to
unrealistic
expectations on the
part of funders.
 Vision and Desired
Results
 Conditions and
Causes
 Strategies and
Activities
 Indicators
 Performance
Measures
1
This figure, presenting the completion of a logic model, was adapted from Harvard
Family Research Project, Learning from Logic Models in Out-of-School Time
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Family Research Project, 2002).
2