intelligent measurement

Ten takeaways on evaluating advocacy and policy change

April 7, 2011 at 1:11 pm Leave a comment

The Harvard Family Research Project produce some excellent material on advocacy evaluation.

From their newsletter(pdf),  here are ten takeways on evaluating advocacy and policy change:

1.Advocacy evaluation has become a burgeoning field.

2. Advocacy evaluation is particularly challenging when approached with a traditional program evaluation mindset.

3. The goals of advocacy and policy change efforts—that is, whether a policy or appropriation was achieved—typically are easy to measure.

4. Many funders’ interest in advocacy evaluation is driven by a desire to help advocates continuously improve their work, rather than to prove that advocacy is a worthy investment.

5. Advocates must often become their own evaluators. Because of their organizational size and available resources, evaluation for many advocates requires internal monitoring and tracking of key measures rather than external evaluation.

6. External evaluators can play critical roles.

7. Context is important.

8. Theories of change and logic models that help drive advocacy evaluation should be grounded in theories about the policy process.

9. Measures must mean something.

10. Evaluation creativity is important.

For more information, view the newsletter(pdf)>>

Entry filed under: Advocacy evaluation, Campaign evaluation.