The Evaluation Exchange
Volume XIII, No. 1, Spring 2007
Issue Topic: Advocacy and Policy Change

This 32-page issue of The Evaluation Exchange describes new developments in evaluating advocacy and policy change efforts that attempt to inform or influence public policy at the local, state, or federal levels.

Download the print version of the issue as a PDF file below, and check back soon for the HTML version of individual articles.

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Inside This Issue

From the Director's Desk
An introduction to the issue by HFRP's Founder & Director, Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.

Theory & Practice

• What's Different About Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change?
  Julia Coffman of HFRP describes four ways evaluators may need to adjust their approaches when evaluating advocacy and policy change.

Evaluations to Watch

• Strategies for Assessing Policy Change Efforts: A Prospective Approach
  Justin Louie and Kendall Guthrie of Blueprint Research and Design outline the steps for advocacy and policy change evaluators to follow in using a prospective approach to evaluation.
• Evaluations Based on Theories of the Policy Process
  Harvard Family Research Project explains how it helps to ground evaluation in theories of the policy process.
• Working With Logic Models to Evaluate a Policy and Advocacy Program
  Authors from the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco describe how they used both macro-level and individual grantee logic models to drive the evaluation design of the Clinic Consortia Policy and Advocacy Program.
• Necessity Leads to Innovative Evaluation Approach and Practice
  Innovation Network describes their methodological innovation—the intense-period debrief—use to engage advocates in evaluative inquiry shortly after a policy window or intense period of action.

Ask the Expert

• Pioneers in the Field: Four Foundations on Advocacy Evaluation
  Representatives from four foundations discuss their expectations and approaches for assessing their advocacy and public policy grantmaking.
• Evaluation and InterAction
  Ken Giunta and Todd Shelton of InterAction answer HFRP's questions about their approaches and ideas on evaluating advocacy.
• What does monitoring and evaluation look like for real-life advocates?
  Stephanie Schaefer, codirector of research at Fight Crime: Invest in Kids—a national nonprofit, bipartisan organization of law enforcement leaders and violence survivors—describes how they use evaluation to inform their advocacy and demonstrate their impact.

Questions & Answers

• A Conversation With Kay Monaco
  Kay Monaco, former executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, discusses the role that evaluation plays in her organization's efforts to change public policy.

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.
• Continuous Progress: Better Advocacy Through Evaluation
  Edith Asibey and David Devlin-Foltz describe the new Continuous Progress website, which helps advocates and grantmakers collaboratively plan and evaluate advocacy efforts.
• A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy
  Organizational Research Services identifies outcomes associated with advocacy and policy work based on its new resource, A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy.

Promising Practices

• Using and Evaluating Social Media for Social Change
  Allison H. Fine is a senior fellow at Demos, a network of action and ideas based in New York City. She writes and speaks on increasing civic participation by harnessing the power of digital technology. In 2006, she published her latest book, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age.
• The eNonprofit Benchmarks Study: Diving Into Email Metrics
  Karen Matheson from M+R Strategic Services describes a recent study that helps nonprofits measure and interpret their online advocacy and fundraising success.
• Constituency Building and Policy Work: Three Paradigms
  Janice Hirota and Robin Jacobowitz describe three paradigms that show how constituency building and policy change efforts can work together to achieve sustainable and systemic reform.
• An Emerging Framework for Assessing Nonprofit Networks
  Based on their new handbook Net Gains, Madeleine Taylor and Peter Pastrik offer guidelines on how to evaluate nonprofit networks that are used to achieve social change goals.

Spotlight

• Evaluating an Issue's Position on the Policy Agenda: The Bellwether Methodology
  Policy issues need both visibility and momentum to be transformed into political action. Harvard Family Research Project's bellwether methodology helps evaluators assess if both characteristics are emerging.
• Evaluating Advocates' Spheres of Influence With Domain Leaders
  The evaluation of the Center for Tobacco-Free Kids gathered data from a wide range of audiences that the advocacy organization targets in order to influence public policy.

New & Noteworthy
This section features an annotated list of papers, organizations, initiatives, and other resources related to the issue's theme.

End Notes
HFRP summarizes key observations raised in this issue of The Evaluation Exchange.

This issue of The Evaluation Exchange was published by Harvard Family Research Project. The Managing Editor for the issue was Julia Coffman, Senior Consultant. It was produced by Marcella Michaud, Publications and Communications Manager, and Carrie-Anne DeDeo, Publications Editor. All rights reserved. This periodical may not be reproduced whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. To request reprint permission or multiple hard copies of the issue email hfrp_pubs@gse.harvard.edu.

Harvard Family Research Project gratefully acknowledges the support of The California Endowment, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of Harvard Family Research Project and do not necessarily reflect the views of our funders.

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