The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy

This article describes the challenges of evaluating advocacy organizations and outlines possible approaches that donors might use. The authors believe that nothing big happens without advocacy understood as concerted efforts to direct public policy (or in some cases, private or corporate decisions) toward socially useful ends. Advocacy includes every form of research, activist journalism, persuasion, coalition-building, and public relations, as well as lobbying and political activity.

Contents

  1. Advocacy in the Real World 
  2. Advocacy and Services Are Radically Different – And Their Evaluations Should Be, Too
  3. Evaluating Advocacy in an Unpredictable World
  4. Conclusion: What Does a Good Advocacy Evaluator Look Like?  

Sources

Teles S & Schmitt M (2011). The elusive craft of evaluating advocacy. Stanford Social Innovation Review in May 2011: Retrieved from http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_elusive_craft_of_evaluating_....

Also via http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/documents/Elusive_Craft.pdf

Support provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation