A Look at The Telling Room’s Theory of Change — and Its Role in Articulating the Nonprofit’s Impact

Since its establishment in 2004, The Telling Room has become a staple of Maine’s art sector, offering school-based writing residency programs, student field trips to writing studios, support for emerging young authors, youth publishing workshops, and so much more.

“We’re founded on the belief that writing is both a beautiful art form and a critical life skill that leads to gains in self-confidence and self-expression,” says Kristina Powell, The Telling Room’s executive director. Each year, Powell and her team empower around 2,500 youth from more than 100 Maine communities to realize these benefits and share their voices through the literary arts.

How does The Telling Room do it? Deep organizational planning underpins its important — often life-changing — work, and that planning most recently culminated in the team crafting a comprehensive theory of change. This strategic work represents more than just an articulation of the organization’s desired impact. It also offers a successful model for creating a solid foundation upon which nonprofits can grow.

Writing as a Tool of Empowerment

Sitting at “the intersection of literary arts and youth empowerment,” as Powell notes, The Telling Room works with young writers in grades 2 through 12, helping students build confidence in their creative expression and, in many cases, learn about the intricacies of the editorial and publishing processes.

The Telling Room team comprises teaching artists who work hand-in-hand with guest writers and visual artists to support young people in learning how to express themselves through their writing. For some youth, school-based programs lead to longer-term mentorships with published writers.

Through their writing and publishing programs, The Telling Room staff focuses on each individual: “We think about the whole person — the whole student, the whole staff member, the whole volunteer. Students bring all their feelings with them, along with great enthusiasm for writing,” says Powell.

Over the past few years, Powell and her team have dedicated themselves to refining the organization’s values and developing a vision statement to help guide their people-centered work. And that strategic planning enabled them to ask critical questions: What does it mean to be at the intersection of literary arts and youth empowerment? What does that work truly look like? And what kind of impact does it have on the communities we serve?

Crafting a Theory of Change

To answer these questions, Powell and her team dedicated themselves to developing a theory of change, or a document that clearly articulates how they believe programming will lead to a desired impact. The first step? Understanding the community itself.

The team brought in Dr. Alexis Mann from Northbound Research & Consulting to help facilitate the process. Mann spoke with staff, youth, and alumni to better comprehend their experiences and then reviewed youth evaluations, quantitative data, and qualitative assessments to map out key components of the theory of change: assumptions, preconditions, outputs, impact categories, and long-term outcomes.

This exercise enabled The Telling Room team to evaluate the “magic” of their programming and consider the impact it has on participants. As such, they identified the ways in which their programs bring their core values and youth-centered work to life, which led them to these key aspects of their theory of change:

• For each program, The Telling Room staff assumes that all youth are enough and that every participant has inherent worth, skill, and value

• Staff are committed to cultivating preconditions — including a space and culture that fosters vulnerability, respect, self-expression, and collaborative learning — to empower youth

• Afterschool, school-based, and community programs serve as the key outputs the organization offers

• Impact categories, or the ways the team aligns their values with their actions, include sustaining youth engagement, investing in community partnerships, strengthening students’ skills, and expanding students’ confidence

• In terms of long-term outcomes, the team wants to help create a future in which youth can make themselves heard and are valued for their contributions

By articulating these core elements of their theory of change, The Telling Room staff were able not only to reflect on what makes the organization so special, but also to build toward a central impact statement that fully encompasses their values, goals, and core work:

“Youth are more empowered and equipped to realize their individual potential and position themselves and their communities for success.”

The team also spent time determining the best way to visualize their theory of change and communicate it to the public. “We wanted the theory of action to feel easily digestible and clear and playful — which is what a lot of our Telling Room communication is,” says Powell. The final product, visualized as an engaging map of their core areas, doesn’t disappoint.

Foundations for Success

In true The Telling Room fashion, the team centered the students throughout the process of creating their theory of change. “We aren’t a youth-led organization, but we are youth-driven. The youth are key stakeholders who advise our work,” says Powell. “When we developed our impact categories, for example, we balanced what we do with what our students tell us they experience.”

Youth, staff, alumni, and community members provided critical insights that grounded the work, while the team’s previous strategic planning and refined values set the foundation. “We became clear on what we do and how we do it, and that allowed us to advance to our deeper theory of change,” says Powell.

With the right conditions in place, The Telling Room team was able to reflect on what participants love about the organization and then identify key strategies to maintain those things. “There’s real excitement around the ‘magic’ of The Telling Room. This theory of change really captures that,” Powell notes. “It captures the conscious choices we’ve made as an organization for how we do this work and how it impacts the youth.”

Early in 2025, The Telling Room team finalized their theory of change and started disseminating it to alumni, staff, board members, and funders — generating excitement at every handoff. Alumni, many of whom serve as ambassadors for the organization, are using it as a tool for connecting with other former youth writers. The board is now better equipped to tell the nonprofit’s story. And staff members now have a visual for explaining the power of The Telling Room to schools, students, and volunteers.

But the work isn’t done! “We work on our strategic plan every few years, and now revisiting the theory of change will become part of that organizational work, too,” says Powell. The team’s commitment to evolving alongside the youth they serve is part of what makes The Telling Room so special. And this theory of change is just one part of that magic.