Introduction
Three tools for advocacy evaluation suggested by The Change Agency.
Tools
No Royal Road: Finding and Following the Natural Pathways in Advocacy Evaluation
As efforts at driving change become more diffuse, involve more actors, and have more transformational goals, we need a radically different approach to thinking about and assessing what effective advocacy looks like. Clear answers and simple tools are appealing, but they ultimately won’t result in good representations of reality or provide the knowledge advocates need. This brief proposes adjustments for how we think about and approach advocacy monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
Evaluating social movement power
Though social movements are not new, there is considerable confusion differentiating social movements from other types of social change and a lack of literacy about how movements build power to transform the status quo. Existing evaluation approaches provide critical guidance for understanding the health and capacity of social movements but don’t go far enough in helping us understand whether movements are making progress toward their goals and translating capacity and strategy into long-term power for the movement. These resources introduce a social movement theory of change, four types of movement power, and indicators for assessing movement power building.
Advocacy and policy change evaluation: Theory and practice
This is the first book-length treatment of the concepts, designs, methods, and tools needed to conduct effective advocacy and policy change evaluations. The authors draw on over 30 years of evaluation experience; collective wisdom based on a new, large-scale survey of evaluators in the field; and in-depth case studies on diverse issues-from the environment, to public health, to human rights. Ideal for evaluators, change makers, and funders, this book is the definitive guide to advocacy and policy change evaluation.
Explore Further
- How do you Measure the Impact of Activism and Advocacy Work?
- Campaign Monitoring and Evaluation: Measuring What Matters
- 3 Templates for Campaign Evaluation
- Measuring Transformational Impact in Human Rights Advocacy, Zehra Mizra, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2021
- A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy, Organizational Research Services, 2007
- The Art of Assessing the Impact of Advocacy Work
- How are we Measuring People Power in 2020+, and where do we go from here?
- Toolkit for Demonstrating the Impact of Independent Advocacy, Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance