| Abstract:
How can we overcome the challenges of evaluating advocacy-the long time frames for change, the complex political environments, the constantly shifting strategies? How can we ensure that our evaluations remain relevant to community organizers, advocates, and their funders? Over the last three years, Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. has developed and refined a prospective approach to evaluating community organizing, advocacy, and policy change efforts that addresses these challenges head on. This session will delve into the lessons we've learned over our last year of work with advocates, organizers and funders in many fields (education, the environment, health care, media reform) and at many levels (coalitions, funder collaboratives, foundation-nonprofit partnerships, grantee clusters). We will compare across fields and levels to pull out lessons about what works, for whom, and in what contexts, and we will discuss our process, note obstacles, and describe how we've worked to overcome those obstacles.
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