Evaluating Advocacy? Start from the Beginning

Posted on 22 July 2010

By Sherine Jayawickrama

Following this blog’s last several posts on impact measurement (and the discussion that it helped engender), I came across an interesting advocacy toolkit on the iScale website that describes a system that combines planning, monitoring and evaluation – all focused on helping advocates learn and make corrections in realtime.

The toolkit is quite detailed and prescribes a multi-step planning process that is likely to take a lot of time upfront, and it demonstrates just how complex multi-actor advocacy campaigns are and how challenging evaluating progress (let alone results) can be. 

I like that, even as it seeks to build the mindset and infrastructure for evaluation from the outset of an advocacy campaign, the toolkit is realistic about how complex evaluating impact will be. It notes that “in most cases, no single actor, factor or strategy can independently create the change needed to achieve success,” and recognizes that “impact is attained through the combined and coordinated efforts of multiple actors… in conjunction with multiple external factors and conditions.”

Advocacy evaluation is a fairly new field that calls for approaches that can meaningfully tell advocates if they are gaining any traction on – and having any influence over – the policy issues on which they are focused. 

NGOs are increasingly investing in advocacy because they know that progress on the issues they care about – at any significant scale – cannot be made without change in the arenas of policies, laws and institutions. 

But how do they know whether their advocacy efforts make a difference in the broader scheme of things?  How do they know how much to invest in advocacy as compared to field programs or fundraising?  How do they share experience and learning with others advocating on the same issues? 

This new advocacy toolkit offers a glimpse of how the Global AIDS Alliance and its campaign partners are setting about these challenges.

Sherine Jayawickrama manages the Humanitarian & Development NGOs domain of practice – and the Humanitarian & Development NGOs blog – at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.