advocacy evaluation
The Change Toolkit
The Change Toolkit is a guide for people in community legal centres – and elsewhere – who are interested in improving the lives of people in their community through law reform, policy and advocacy. A new resource for strategic and effective systemic advocacy drawing...
Using evaluation to become an effective learning organization
More and more grant makers are looking at evaluation in a new light. They are redefining its role in philanthropy in five ways: It’s about improvement, not just proof; It’s about contribution, not attribution; It’s about learning with others, not alone; It’s about...
Planning to win | DIY campaign planning platform
If you are looking to win support for an issue, impact policy, or get a corporation or government body to change its policies, this guide is for you. This guide is designed to work best with issue campaigns, policy campaigns and corporate campaigns. It could also help...
“Transactions, Transformations, Translations: The Metrics of Movement Building” with Manuel Pastor
Social movements change narratives as well as policies, hearts as well as minds. But ultimately, one needs to demonstrate impact, particularly in a philanthropic world that is increasingly evidence driven. In this talk, Pastor presents the key elements of movement...
Resources for evaluating community organising
Resources for Evaluating Community Organizing (RECO) is a compendium of resources related to evaluating community organizing. RECO is designed to help organizers, funders, and evaluators quickly and easily find the resources to help them learn what is working and what...
Transactions, transformations, translations: Metrics that matter for building, scaling and funding social movements
A critical challenge for practitioners and foundations is how to develop linkages across sectors in a way that broadens and deepens the overall impact and support base for community wealth-building strategies. Ideally, an integrated approach would encompass mutually...
Pathways for change: 10 theories to inform advocacy and policy change
Sarah Stachowiak’s report lays out 10 theories grounded in diverse disciplines and worldviews that have relevance to the world of advocacy and policy change. These theories can help to untangle beliefs and assumptions about the inner workings of the policy...
How shortcuts cut us short: Cognitive traps in philanthropic decision making
A new brief by Tanya Beer and Julia Coffman highlights five common cognitive traps that can trip up philanthropic decision making, along with straightforward steps to overcome them. Examples show where in the grantmaking cycle foundations are particularly vulnerable...
Intelligent measurement
Great collection of resources and links on advocacy evaluation. Check out, especially: “The Challenge of Assessing Policy and Advocacy Activities: Strategies for a Prospective Evaluation Approach” and downloadable resources on communications and...
When greens eat themselves
The two biggest criticisms of ‘Say Yes’ from both inside and outside the coalition were that “we were speaking to ourselves” or that we were speaking only to “the politicians in Canberra”… A fascinating article on the 2011...
Give racism the finger (campaign evaluation)
Campaign evaluations are few and far between. Relatively few campaigners even document their campaigns! We’re pleased to link to Priscilla Brice-Weller’s evaluation of the ‘Give racism the finger’ campaign.
Benchmarking evaluation in foundations: Do we know what we are doing?
Much like the discipline of evaluation itself, the evaluation function in philanthropy – with staff assigned to evaluation-related responsibilities – is a fairly recent phenomenon…
Advocacy Evaluation Update: Centre for Evaluation Innovation
The growing interest in using advocacy as a strategy for achieving social change has sparked a lively discussion on how to document and measure the success of advocacy strategies.
Advocacy evaluation
Rationale Our advocacy evaluation action research project seeks to support progressive social change organisations to evaluate the impacts and outcomes of their efforts. Compared to other sectors and types of organisation, civil society groups working toward social...
A users guide to advocacy evaluation planning
This new tool from Harvard Family Research Project and developed by Julia Coffman takes users through four basic steps that generate the core elements of an advocacy evaluation plan, including what will be measured and how. The tool includes a comprehensive list of...
Evaluation for strategic learning: Assessing readiness and results
Evaluation for strategic learning is the use of data and insights from a variety of information-gathering approaches—including evaluation—to inform decision-making about strategy. This approach to evaluation has a specific objective—improving strategy—in the same way...
Pathfinder: A practical guide to advocacy evaluation (advocates’ edition)
Just like any other work nonprofits engage in, advocacy needs to be continually assessed, tweaked, and strength- ened through a process of evaluation and learning.
Pathfinder: A practical guide to advocacy evaluation (evaluator edition)
This guide is an introduction to advocacy evaluation from the evaluator’s perspective. It is will give you a sense of what is involved in advocacy evaluation and what the differences are between advocacy evaluation and other program evaluation.