From Doing It All To Doing What Matters

A Theory of Change Case Study with Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy

When Reverend Dr. LaKeisha Cook fully stepped into the Executive Director role at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) in 2024, she inherited a proud legacy of faith-based advocacy and a team committed to justice in Virginia. She also inherited a quieter, harder truth.

Staff were stretched thin. Programs had multiplied over the years without anyone asking whether each one was still essential to the work. And if you asked staff, board members, partners, or community members what VICPP actually does, you would hear a different answer from each one of them.

LaKeisha could see what most leaders only sense in their first months: the team did not need a strategic plan yet. They needed something deeper. They needed to know, together, who they were and what change they were here to make. Without that, every new opportunity would keep feeling like an obligation, every redundant program would stay too sacred to question, and every staff member would keep carrying the weight of trying to be everything to everyone.

THE WORK

VICPP brought Strategic Disruption in to facilitate development of the organization’s first ever Theory of Change. We designed a process that honored VICPP’s faith roots while building the strategic muscle the team needed to focus, align, and sustain itself.

Before any of that strategic work began, our team joined VICPP staff for an immersive historical experience that traced the racial history of Richmond, VA where VICPP’s work is based. Together, we walked the Slave Trail, watched gruesome reenactments of human indignities, and moved through an embodied recreation of the disorientation endured by enslaved Africans. This shared experience set the foundation for an honest, trusting, and vulnerable environment to explore the causal pathways to racial justice in modern Virginia. 

The next day, we moved into the strategic work: a full-day staff retreat to ground the team in what a Theory of Change actually is, to surface the tensions already living inside how staff understood VICPP’s mission, and to begin drafting shared language out loud, in the same room.

From there, we moved into two months of working group sessions with a cross-functional staff team. We refined the mission and vision. We reflected on who VICPP serves and stays accountable to, engaging community members along the way. We backwards-mapped pathways of change, naming the short, medium, and long-term strategies and activities that move the organization toward its vision. And we closed by interrogating the assumptions and external forces that could shape, slow, or shift the work ahead.

The result was a Theory of Change designed to live and breathe inside the organization, not sit on a shelf.

WHAT CHANGED

VICPP now has a Theory of Change that names a clear vision, five conditions of success spanning economic, racial, and social justice, civic power, and faith and values alignment, and five strategies that connect everyday activity to long-term change.

The framework has shifted how the organization plans, partners, and protects its capacity. Staff can speak to a unified mission. Leadership can decline meaningful but misaligned opportunities without guilt. Investments and partnerships are measured against the framework instead of chosen by default. And the strategic plan now underway is rising up from a foundation, not from a blank page.

But the most telling outcome may be the simplest one. The Theory of Change is no longer a document the team consults. It has become the language they speak.

“Working with Strategic Disruption and getting that Theory of Change has proven to be one of the most foundational pieces we could have ever done. It’s clarified so much. We’re now looking at a strategic plan, and the Theory of Change is starting to naturally flow through in conversation. It used to be something I’d have to look at and read through. Now it’s organic. It’s living and breathing in a different way. I know it was the right place to start." — Reverend Dr. LaKeisha Cook, Executive Director, VICPP

WHY IT MATTERS

Movement organizations are often asked to do everything for everyone, and the cost shows up in burnout, blurred mission, and partnerships that drift from purpose. A well-built Theory of Change is one of the most practical tools a leader has for protecting both impact and people. For VICPP, it became the foundation for the strategic planning work now underway, and a quiet but powerful permission slip to focus on what actually moves justice forward in Virginia.

Want to see the final Theory of Change? Take a look!

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