advocacy evaluation
Measuring People Power in 2020+ (report)
How do you measure gifts of time, expertise and leadership? What indicators can you use to assess grassroots power building, organising and volunteer initiatives? To answer these questions, MobLab and 13 other organisations embarked on research, consultations and a...
No Royal Road: Finding and Following the Natural Pathways in Advocacy Evaluation
As efforts at driving change become more diffuse, involve more actors, and have more transformational goals, we need a radically different approach to thinking about and assessing what effective advocacy looks like. Clear answers and simple tools are appealing, but...
Measuring political will
A win often means getting the support of elected officials, and the Policymaker Rating method was designed to measure just that. This brief shares scenarios where this method was applied and modified to show what has worked (and what utterly failed). This resource is...
Evaluating social movement power
Though social movements are not new, there is considerable confusion differentiating social movements from other types of social change and a lack of literacy about how movements build power to transform the status quo. Existing evaluation approaches provide critical...
ROMA: A guide to policy engagement and policy influence
For many international development organisations, influencing policy is a critical means to achieve long term change. For over a decade, the Research and Policy in Development team at ODI has worked around the world to understand how to foster sustainable policy...
Advocacy and policy change evaluation: Theory and practice (book)
This is the first book-length treatment of the concepts, designs, methods, and tools needed to conduct effective advocacy and policy change evaluations. The authors draw on over 30 years of evaluation experience; collective wisdom based on a new, large-scale survey of...
Funding advocacy and policy change | Atlas learning project
Over the course of two years and hundreds of interviews with foundations, advocates, evaluators, and other experts, a consistent theme emerged around the need for foundations to be more aggressive and adaptive in their support for advocacy and policy change. This...
Logic Model Workbook (Innovation Network)
A logic model is a commonly-used tool to clarify and depict a program within an organization. You may have heard it described as a logical framework, theory of change, or program matrix—but the purpose is usually the same: to graphically depict your program,...
State of Evaluation 2016: Evaluation Capacity and Practice in the Nonprofit Sector
Recent findings (from 2016) about how nonprofits engage in evaluation, and the capacities and characteristics of their organizations. “Funding for evaluation is also moving in the right direction, with more nonprofits receiving funding for evaluation from at...
Legal advocacy as a strategy
TCC Group has been examining how advocacy organizations use legal advocacy as a strategy and how funders can best support that work. Here, they share the results of their work to help inform funders, legal advocates, non-legal advocates, and evaluators about the field...
10 LESSONS FROM BRITAIN’S CAMPAIGN GURUS
Earlier this year, Sam McLean (former CEO of GetUp Australia) spent two weeks working with British campaigning wizards, 38Degrees — the British sister organisation of GetUp. Here are his top 10 lessons for campaigners from our British mates: “It was just a...
Oh for the love of sticky notes: The Changing Role of Evaluators Who Work with Foundations
Julia Coffman (Director and founder of the Center for Evaluation Innovation) writes: “I’ve been an evaluator for 25 years now, and I love it. I love the opportunity to apply research skills to important questions. I love helping people to think about their...
evaluation capacity building: Funder Initiatives to Strengthen Grantee Evaluation Capacity and Practice (report)
Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) is the process of improving an organization’s ability to use evaluation to learn from its work and improve results. Organizational learning is incredibly important. Organizations that are adept at learning from mistakes and adapting...
Beyond the win: Pathways for policy implementation
When it comes to policy, a lot of attention is given to “ the win.” Whether it is something new and big like the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation in a large federal omnibus bill, or inclusion of critical language in a state policy, seeing the fruits of...
The elusive craft of evaluating advocacy
Advocacy evaluation is a craft, one in which tacit knowledge, skill and networks are more useful than the application of a rigid methodology. It is an exercise in trained judgment. The evaluator, rather than the formal qualities of the evaluation, is what...
Better Evaluation Rainbow
The BetterEvaluation Rainbow Framework organises different evaluation options (methods and strategies) in terms of different tasks in an evaluation, organised into seven clusters: manage an evaluation; define what is to be evaluated; frame the boundaries for an...
Assessing advocacy
This new framework provides a methodical and organised approach to managing some of philanthropy’s most complicated endeavours. The framework evaluates projects for nine conditions, from the presence of effective champions to favourable timing. It complements and...
Evaluating Networks for Social Change: A Casebook
In response to the growing interest of grant-makers and network builders, this casebook profiles nine evaluations that address key questions about network effectiveness while expanding what is known about assessment approaches that fit with how networks develop and...