Search Results

publication Aug 2012

Advocacy & Public Policy Grantmaking: Matching Process to Purpose

How should foundations approach their advocacy and public policy grantmaking? This report offers three options and explores what it means for foundations to design grantmaking that builds the capacity and influence of an advocacy field.

By Tanya Beer

publication Feb 2012

Shaking the Tree: Evaluating Programs that Combine Services and Advocacy

Monitoring and evaluation strategies can demonstrate accountability and deliver results to stakeholders—both upwards to donors and downwards to the individuals providers serve. This brief examines how service delivery organizations conducting advocacy should think about monitoring and evaluating their work.

publication Jan 2012

Best Practices and Emerging Trends in Advocacy Grantmaking

Foundations make many choices in designing and supporting advocacy portfolios. Best practices can guide this work. 

By Tanya Beer

publication Sep 2011

Advocacy Evaluation Case Study: The Chalkboard Project

An evaluation of a civic engagement and advocacy effort in Oregon offered an opportunity to incorporate both retrospective and prospective approaches and new advocacy evaluation tools. It is a case example of how evaluation can support strategic learning among advocates.

publication Sep 2011

Evaluation of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Preschool for California’s Children Grantmaking Program

This teaching case focuses on an evaluation that aimed for real-time strategic learning over the course of a 10-year initiative. It chronicles the challenges with achieving that while the strategy shifted and evaluators grappled with how to provide information that was of real value to the work. 

publication Jul 2011

Looking Through the Right End of the Telescope

Questions about whether it is possible to evaluate advocacy have led to a proliferation of new tools aimed at responding to the real and perceived unique challenges to evaluating advocacy. This brief questions whether the advocacy evaluation field's emphasis on the development of tools is best serving advocates.

publication Nov 2010

Social Movements and Philanthropy: How Foundations Can Support Movement Building

Movement building presents unique challenges for foundations. Because movements, by definition, must be driven by the people who are most affected, foundations cannot pre-determine their goals and timetables. This Foundation Review article describes how to support and evaluate social movements, including outlining core elements to movement building and proposing an evaluative framework. 

publication Aug 2010

Champions and “Champion-ness”: Measuring Efforts to Create Champions for Policy Change

Creating “policy champions” who shepherd policy change is central to many advocacy efforts. But what exactly is a champion for policy change? How can we assess progress in identifying, informing, or activating them? This brief offers a tool for defining and tracking the activity of champions for policy change, along with the challenges involved in using it.

publication Aug 2010

Measuring Impact in Practice: A Case Study of The Humane Society of the United States

Just like all nonprofits, the Humane Society of the United States is accountable—to the animals it protects and to its donors. This brief describes how the nation’s largest animal protection organization developed an impact framework to capture its advocacy and direct service outcomes.

publication Aug 2010

Using a Social Justice Lens in Advocacy Evaluation

Social justice advocacy works for enduring changes that increase the power of those who are most disadvantaged politically, economically, and socially. This brief discusses how to incorporate the concept of social justice and its underlying values into advocacy evaluation.

publication Mar 2010

Evaluating Community Organizing

Community organizing has gained visibility as a vibrant and potent force for social change. While it shares many characteristics with policy advocacy, it differs in significant ways and the approaches to evaluating the two also differ. This brief offers a vision for community organizing evaluation that is grounded in a set of principles based on direct experience with organizers. 

publication Oct 2009

Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change: The Funder’s Perspective

Funders with experience in advocacy evaluation have found that getting buy-in from grantees and other funder staff can be challenging. This brief offers responses.