Advocacy Evaluation Mini-Toolkit: Tips and Tools for Busy Organizations

This toolkit from Learning for Action (LFA) is designed to support the evaluation of advocacy campaigns and initiatives. The resource provides both detailed guidance and a range of tools for articulating and measuring advocacy outcomes. It outlines the evaluation process from the prioritisation of evaluation questions through to the integration of reflection into an advocacy evaluation. 

Excerpt

"To launch your evaluation, you should engage in two foundational exercises: developing an advocacy roadmap, and identifying the evaluation questions that are most important for you to answer.

• An advocacy roadmap. A roadmap is a visual representation of what your ultimate policy goal is, and how you plan to get there. It is fine to think of it either as a logic model or a theory of change – the important thing is that it shows your tactics/activities, the interim outcomes that signal progress toward your ultimate goal, and your ultimate goal. Including in it various contextual factors that will support or hinder your progress can also be helpful. If you haven’t already made one as part of your advocacy effort, it’s time to make one now to kick off your evaluation!
• Evaluation questions. It can be tempting to want to know everything! Trying to answer every evaluation question that your model suggests is the quickest way to get overwhelmed and decide that evaluation is not worth it. Be sure to identify a limited set of evaluation questions, and answer just a few key questions at first – you can always answer more later as you get more comfortable with evaluation." (LFA, 2013)

Contents

• Launching an evaluation: quick tips on developing a roadmap and identifying questions 1 
  • Key Questions to ask Yourself as You Develop Your Roadmap 1         
  • Rad Resources 1 
  • Questions to Ask Yourself as you Identify and Prioritize Evaluation Questions 1 
• Tracking advocacy activities 3 
  • Why track activities? 3 
  • Examples of Activities to Track 3 
  • What to Track when Tracking Activities 3 
  • Tracking Technology 3 
  • How to Make Activity Tracking Useful 4 
  • Rad Resources 4 
• Tools for articulating and measuring interim outcomes 5 
  • Tracking Awareness / Understanding of an Issue, Problem, or Solution 7 
  • Tracking Organizational Changes 10 
  • Tracking Advocate and Policymaker Support 12 
  • Tracking Public Will 14 
• Guidance for integrating reflection into your advocacy evaluation 16 
  • Activity Tracking as Fodder for Reflection 16 
  • Institutionalizing Regular Reflection Sessions 16 
  • Reflection Questions 16 
  • Intense-Period Debrief 17 
• More rad resources 18