| by Simone Parrish, Knowledge Manager, Innovation
Network, Inc.
Defining Our Terms
Part One
Within the evaluation field, "advocacy evaluation" has only
recently become a specialty. Advocacy evaluation is growing
quickly, supported by lively conversation-not just among
evaluators, but among nonprofit staff and funders as well.
Innovation Network (InnoNet) has been involved in advocacy
evaluation since 2005. (Learn more about our advocacy evaluation
work here.)
As with any new discipline, the lines have yet to be clearly
drawn, even around something as basic as what advocacy means.
InnoNet defines advocacy as "a wide range of activities
conducted to influence decision makers at various levels." In
essence, advocacy is about influence: changing minds, reframing
arguments, and inspiring social movements. We are interested
in the evaluation of traditional advocacy work like litigation,
lobbying, and public education. We are also intrigued by
influence work that occurs in a less official milieu-the
things that have to happen at the personal and community
level before a framework for policy change can exist. Our
expanded definition of advocacy includes these other kinds
of influence work: network formation, relationship building,
community organizing, communication, and leadership development,
among others.
Though most nonprofits don't think of themselves as "advocacy
organizations," many of them are involved in advocacy as
we define it. It may be useful to think of nonprofit work
along a continuum. As shown in Figure 1, nonprofits
tend to fall somewhere between "pure service" and "pure advocacy." An
organization that devotes equal resources to its service
and advocacy activities could be called a "service/advocacy
hybrid." A hybrid organization may slide back and forth between
the extremes of this continuum throughout its lifespan. Nonprofits
often expand or reduce their advocacy efforts in step with
their own goals, available funding, and outside forces, such
as the political climate.
InnoNet defines evaluation as "The systematic collection
of information about a program that enables stakeholders
to better understand the program, improve its effectiveness,
and/or make decisions about future programming." Evaluation
practices and processes are integral to an organization's
ability to learn about its own work (see Figure
2).
What makes evaluating advocacy work different from evaluating
other kinds of activities? For one thing, there has been
a perception that advocacy work is "hard to measure." This
has discouraged many people from attempting advocacy evaluation.
Rhonda Schlangen, Senior Evaluation Associate with the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America's International Division,
gives one perspective: "Coming at [evaluation] from my background
[as an advocate], I was puzzled to see advocacy evaluation
really wasn't being done. I was even told by a donor that
it was impossible-that you could not establish a relationship
between a vote and an advocacy effort." In a recent interview
with InnoNet, Lina Paredes, Director of Grantmaking at the
Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles, echoed this stance: "It
is very hard to evaluate [advocacy] work."
The perception of advocacy being hard to measure is now
being broken down by evaluation practitioners and advocacy
funders, who are calling for changes in evaluation emphasis.
In her interview, Ms. Paredes elaborated: "As a funder we
understand the long-term investment that social change requires.
So as long as groups show progress towards their long-term
goals, we will often provide repeat funding [.] Just because
a grantee doesn't win a policy victory doesn't mean that
they've been defeated or unsuccessful. We have to look at
other measures of success: skills built internally (knowledge,
strategy), increased organizational capacity, base building,
etc."
As Julia Coffman, editor of the Harvard Family Research
Project's Evaluation Exchange, puts it:
Because the nature of advocacy work often differs in important
ways from direct services and other programs, we need to
examine how evaluation can be most useful in this context.
This does not mean inventing a whole new way of doing evaluation;
it means adjusting our approaches in ways that make evaluation
relevant and useful within the advocacy and policy context.
As the conversation in the field grows, many articles and
reports have enumerated differences between advocacy work
and direct service programs. Recognizing and accounting for
these differences is crucial to planning a successful advocacy
evaluation. In this series, we will focus on three primary
differences: timeframes, organizational capacity, and the
importance of relationship building.
Next week, we'll discuss timeframes and organizational capacity.
Figures
Figure 1
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Figure 2
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