Beyond Basic Training
Evaluating Nonprofit Advocacy Simply: An Oxymoron?
Marcia Egbert and Susan Hoechstetter offer nine principles to guide advocacy
evaluation, based on a recent and groundbreaking Alliance for Justice tool on
this topic.
When Alliance for Justice and Rosenberg Foundation began a project to equip
funders with a practical way to evaluate advocacy back in 2002, little relevant
research or methodology was available. Consequently, Alliance for Justice and
The George Gund Foundation partnered to develop new tools that would be practical,
flexible, and equally easy for grantmakers and grantseekers to use. The resulting
2005 publication, Build Your Advocacy Grantmaking: Advocacy Capacity Assessment
& Evaluation Tools, became the first guide of its kind for nonprofit
advocacy. The two new tools featured in the guide will be available online for
the first time in April 2007.
In the time since the guide's publication, the field of evaluating advocacy
has truly taken off. Multiple evaluation models are now available, and new work
is continually emerging. As the field grows, it is important to remember the
principles of simplicity, flexibility, and grantee partici-pation. We offer
the following nine principles to guide evaluators and advocates in advocacy
evaluation.
1. Keep it simple. A simple evaluation framework—even a
checklist with a bit of narrative—based on advocacy experience is much
more manageable for most nonprofits than complex evaluation requirements that
unduly tax already sparse resources, particularly staff time.
2. Value capacity building as a key outcome measure. Very often,
the most visible progress that results from advocacy work is the capacity built
by a nonprofit. This capacity could include new coalitions formed, relationships
gained with public policy decision makers, and skills developed to navigate
complex legislative, judicial, executive branch, and election-related processes.
3. Flexibility is a strength, and “failure” to reach a big
goal may actually produce important incremental gains. Perhaps the state's
budget went into the red following a recession. Obtaining a desired increase
in appropriations for child care programs may no be longer be feasible that
year, but gaining enforcement of existing licensing requirements for higher
quality of services might. The nonprofit that can change strategies when the
external environment shifts is a stronger advocate. Achieving expected or unexpected
benchmarks is important, given the long-term nature of much advocacy work.
4. Let the story be told. Understanding how and why the work
unfolded as it did is central to gauging the success of advocacy activity. Telling
the story provides a narrative to complement benchmarks by explaining the outside
factors that caused the work to take the direction it did.
5. Be clear about evaluation expectations from the beginning of the
grant review process. Grantseekers and grantmakers should mutually agree
up front about what constitutes effective work and how much leeway grantees
have to make choices that vary with the circumstances of their proposed work.
The Capacity Assessment Tool can help clarify these expectations.
6. The sum is greater than the parts. Accepting this premise
helps alleviate concerns about isolating a particular organization's precise
contribution to an overall advocacy outcome. For example, unless an organization
is the only one working on a particular policy issue, it may never be certain
which organization's actions were the defining reason for a related policy outcome.
Yet, the organization can identify specific ways in which the grantee's actions
spurred or contributed to policymaking. For those who care about policy change,
knowing that they or their grantee effectively influenced the outcome should
be enough.
7. Measure influence in creative ways. Nontraditional evaluation
methods can help meet the challenge of measuring influence. For example, staff
members at The California Wellness Foundation deemed one grantee's public education
campaign successful when they heard the California Attorney General reframe
the issue in the same terms used by the public education campaigns. Other funders
have sought the opinions of community members and legislators regarding how
effective their grantees' efforts have been in influencing them. Typical ways
to indicate influence might include an invitation for a nonprofit organization
to testify at a legislative hearing or newly won support from a state agency
official for changes in a regulation.
8. Evaluation requires time and/or money. Nonprofit advocates
often have the best information available to evaluate their work, but when outside
evaluators are needed, money must be allocated for them.
9. Understand foundations' potential nonmonetary contribution to advocacy
activities. While some nonprofits will say they could have used more
flexible or longer term funding, grantees may also seek funders' nonfinancial
assistance in their advocacy efforts. For example, MAZON: A Jewish Response
to Hunger contracted a consultant to evaluate its California Nutrition Initiative
advocacy project. One question in their grantee survey was about in what other
ways the funder could have helped its advocacy effort. MAZON learned that grantees
most wanted introductions to public policy leaders.
As more funders tiptoe, walk, run, or gallop headlong into the world of funding
public policy and advocacy, we hope these simple principles help alleviate a
common worry that such work is impossible to measure.
Marcia Egbert
Senior Program Officer
The George Gund Foundation
45 Prospect Avenue, West, Suite 1845
Cleveland, OH 44115
Tel: 216-241-3114
Email: megbert@gundfdn.org
Susan Hoechstetter
Foundation Advocacy Director
Alliance for Justice, 11 Dupont Circle, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-822-6070
Email: shoech@afj.org
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