The KaBOOM! Theory of Change

If you can picture it, you can believe it. If you can believe it, you can build it.

Picture a diverse group of volunteers collaborating to achieve the simple goal of building a playspace in one day for children. Picture communities across the country tapping into KaBOOM! planning tools and leveraging the collaborative support of corporate and community resources to achieve an immediate and visible "win" for their neighborhood. If you can picture it, you can believe it. If you can believe it, you can build it. That is the KaBOOM! Theory of Change.

The KaBOOM! Theory of Change is built upon the belief that the process of organizing a community-build playspace is as important as the product: the playspace itself. There are three pillars that support our Theory of Change:

• Collective Cause: Like teammates on a sport team striving to win a game, a diverse group of volunteers use their different skills to collaborate and achieve the straightforward and simple goal of building a playspace in one day for the universal cause of children's well-being.
  
• Achievable Wins: Community development research has shown that an important step in community empowerment is to achieve a small, probable "win." A community group that has successfully built a new playground or skatepark is more likely to believe they can individually and collectively make a difference. And they are more likely to act on future community needs.
  
• Cascading Steps of Courage: Small steps of courage lead to greater acts of courage. Researchers have explored what has caused people to take significant courageous actions to benefit others and one of the leading factors for such acts was the presence of small, civically minded steps early on in life, which helped shape personal values and, over time, progressed to greater, civically-minded acts.

Collectively, these pillars help KaBOOM! activate powerful citizenship.

KaBOOM! believes that, together, we can achieve it by pursuing smaller common goals: a playground, skatepark or field complex, toward collective causes − the well-being of children, a one day build (that results in achievable wins), all through the small, yet courageous act of volunteering. This is how KaBOOM! activates powerful citizenship.

Read more about our strategy to achieve our vision and mission.