EAA advocacy evaluation guide

This guide, written by Cristina Mansfield for Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), presents a set of simple guidelines that can be used for evaluating advocacy initiatives. Designed as a tool that evaluators can use to develop their own advocacy evaluations it provides guidance, examples and a workbook area.  

Excerpt

"There are three main types of advocacy evaluation: retrospective, prospective and developmental. A retrospective evaluation is done after the campaign has been implemented. It is backwards looking and cannot be used to make adjustments – although it does allow campaigners to identify lessons learned. A prospective evaluation is built into the campaign and permits continuous monitoring and adjustment. It also increases transparency and promotes a learning culture. A third type of evaluation is the developmental evaluation, which aims to support program, staff and/or organizational development. Recent advocacy evaluation literature places considerable importance on using advocacy evaluation as a learning and organizational development tool. Many evaluations tend to be retrospective because evaluation and monitoring were not included in the original campaign design." (Mansfield, 2010)

Contents

• Advocacy Evaluation Basics 2
• Dimensions of Advocacy Evaluation 4
• Tool 1: Determining the focus of an advocacy evaluation   6
• Tool 2: Planning the Evaluation   12
• Tool 3 Evaluating Advocacy Planning  19
• Tool 4: Leadership for Advocacy Worksheet  24
• Tool 5: Example - Measuring Outputs  29
• What do impact indicators measure?  33