Hello friends,

Welcome back to Theory of Change, your weekly guide to building a purpose-led organisation that donors trust, teams love, and society actually needs.

This week we are continuing to dissect the frameworks the nonprofit world inherited from corporate culture, and suggest better alternatives.

This week’s a good ‘un: the trusty SWOT Analysis.

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WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE

The original SWOT analysis, called the SOFT approach, was designed as a tool in one of the earliest strategic planning frameworks, named the System of Plans. The team that invented it ran workshops with hundreds of executives and developed four areas of a 2x2 matrix: Satisfactory, Opportunity, Fault, Threat.

It was meant to help organisations take stock: what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s changing around them. Over time, “Fault” became “Weakness” and “Satisfactory” turned into “Strength.” The acronym SWOT was catchier, and became as ubiquitous as disappointing coffee from Starbucks.

By the 1980s, business schools had turned SWOT into gospel. Managers loved it because it was simple, fast, and gave the illusion of control. A few coloured markers and voilà: STRATEGY!

But for the kind of complex, interconnected messy problems most of you are dealing with?

Hmmm...

WHERE IT FALLS APART

1. SWOT imagines a predictable environment full of opportunities and threats. But in 2025, as we’re cheerfully working through global burnout, AI colonisation, consensus collapse, and economic erosion, we need something that assumes a less static version of our dumpster fire world.

2. Most teams end up using SWOT to validate what they already believe. It’s a kind of strategy karaoke where everyone sings the same tune, slightly off-key, and goes home thinking they’ve made music.

3. In addition, SWOT works against the idea of the commons, or shared knowledge. It treats your organisation’s strengths as internal assets you must possess and fiercely guard. We end up talking about moats, and defensibility, and USPs. But in reality, if you’re working in social change or fundraising, your power depends on who trusts you, not just what you own.

A BETTER WAY TO THINK ABOUT IT

The shift we need isn’t from SWOT to another acronym (though - fear not! - I do have some of those for you later).

It’s from cold, frozen-in-time analysis to something more adaptive, a kind of cultural sense-making. Strategy today isn’t about conquering uncertainty, it’s about learning and living within it.

The most successful organisations I’ve seen in social change have moved decisively toward understanding systemic change by mapping networks, trust, and feedback loops rather than ticking off internal weaknesses. There’s a good primer on how to get started on that here. (I find myself referring back to Jenn Brandel’s 2020 article on power-mapping in journalism a lot).

At this point, even enemy-of-the-newsletter McKinsey has admitted the old frameworks are obsolete. Their 2025 research calls for models that can anticipate and adapt as quickly as change itself. For nonprofits, that translates neatly: your “operating system” (that is how you collaborate, partner, and learn) matters more than your supposed competitive advantage.

What this all means for you:

1. Choose tools that highlight relationships and feedback, not just categories.

2. Treat frameworks as conversation starters and placeholders, not answers.

3. Make strategy a living experiment that is revised often and owned collectively.

TRY IT THIS WEEK

If you, like me, can’t resist a 2x2 grid, let’s at least make it one that earns its keep.

So, three printable, team-friendly alternatives to SWOT that I’ve found valuable (if you bear the above in mind!):

• SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results). SWOT’s optimistic cousin! Ask what’s working and what’s possible, instead of what’s wrong.

• TOWS (aka SWOT with a purpose). Flips SWOT to turn pure reflection into actionable strategy.

• PACE. Maps out your Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency options so you’re not caught off guard when things shift. Highly recommended for any high-profile nonprofit these days, I‘ve worked with two organisations recently that have concrete processes to move their entire operation to another country should the s**t hit the fan.

By all means, use these 2×2s to sketch and test your ideas. Just remember that the world rarely stays in its assigned quadrant. If an answer seems too simple, it probably is.

🌊 WAVE GOODBYE 🌊

In a rare escape from the remote German countryside, I went to the Mozilla Festival in Barcelona this weekend.

I've been struggling a bit recently, feeling both overwhelmed and bored, which is a pretty tricky combination to navigate. Even though the festival didn't really bring any new ideas, it did reinforce my conviction that I am working on the right problems. I'm dedicating the next part of my professional career to building networked, feminist, and commons-based organisations, of that I'm sure.

And, of course, meeting up with dear friends and co-conspirators is always, always worth it. Something to remember if you are a freelancer or solopreneur. Something I seem to forget with alarming regularity.

Thanks for being here, as ever. If any of my free databases, courses, frameworks, GPTs, newsletters, or videos have helped you fundraise, think differently, or change your organisation in some small way, please consider tipping me so I can continue this work.

Thanks to those who supported me recently, I can't tell you how much it means. 🙏

Adam