Amplifying nonprofit voices: Bridging the advocacy evaluation gap

This evaluation research report aims to better understand nonprofit advocates' ability to evaluate their advocacy capacity, strategies, and tactics; identify their evaluation needs; and develop recommendations on advocate-friendly evaluation practices.

This resource and the following information were contributed by Annette L Gardner.

Authors and their affiliation

Annette L Gardner, PhD, MPH. Principal, ALGardner Consulting

Shannon Williams, MA, LLM, Director of Operations and Evaluation for the Bolder Advocacy program at the Alliance for Justice

Susan Hoechstetter, MSW, Principal at Strengthening Democracy

Key features of Amplifying nonprofit voices

Our strategy was to seek input directly from nonprofits and learn more about their current advocacy practices and lived experience with evaluation in their organization and in evaluating their advocacy. Our aim was to better understand nonprofit advocates' ability to evaluate their advocacy capacity, strategies, and tactics; identify their evaluation needs; and develop recommendations on advocate-friendly evaluation practices. How common is it for advocates to evaluate their work? Why do nonprofits evaluate their efforts? What evaluation methods do they use, and which methods do they find useful? And, importantly, what support do nonprofit advocates want with regard to helping them better evaluate their advocacy?

Our findings suggest we have reason to be optimistic. Nonprofit evaluation capacity exists and can be leveraged by savvy evaluators and supportive funders. Second, we have a clearer idea of the specific types of evaluation that are used and useful to nonprofit advocates, which provides a clear path forward to providing targeted evaluation support. Third, we have a current snapshot of actual nonprofit advocacy and where advocates, evaluators, and funders will need to focus their attention, such as developing IT and virtual advocacy evaluation resources. Together, these findings help to clarify the roles that key stakeholders—advocates, evaluators, and funders—can play in evolving the field of advocacy and policy change evaluation to better meet advocate evaluation needs and increase advocacy effectiveness.

How have you used or intend to use this resource?

We recently released the report; however, we have conducted presentations at two evaluation conferences with two aims:

• Support practitioner practice, such as recommendations for "meeting advocates where they are at" and;
• Contribute to the dialogue on advocacy and policy change field-building, such as revisiting our assumptions on what advocates do, why they evaluate, and what methods and resources they would find useful.

Why would you recommend it to other people?

The report makes evidence-based recommendations to advocates, evaluators and funders to better meet advocate evaluation needs and increase advocacy effectiveness. It advances our understanding of the advocate perspective and supports concrete action steps.