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Session Title: Investing in Learning, Investing in Change: Measuring the Impact of Advocacy
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Panel Session 987 to be held in San Clemente on Saturday, Nov 5, 2:20 PM to 3:50 PM
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Sponsored by the Advocacy and Policy Change TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Nancy Csuti, The Colorado Trust, nancy@coloradotrust.org
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| Abstract:
While funders have increasingly added funding advocacy to their grantmaking portfolios, how to evaluate the impact of this funding continues to be debated. This session will discuss concrete examples of options for learning about, evaluating, and documenting the impact of advocacy funding in more than 10 states. The session will cover what information is collected and how. Discussions of the multiple audiences for this information - grantees, funders, advocacy groups - and how they might best use the knowledge to inform their work and achieve bigger impacts will be included. At the end of this session attendees will better understand why funders invest in evaluation of advocacy as well as methods for how to do this in a way meaningful to both funders and advocacy organizations.
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The Investment: Advocacy Evaluation Framework
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| Tanya Beer, Center for Evaluation Innovation, tbeer@evaluationinnovation.org
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Tanya Beer will frame the panel discussion with an overview of the current "state of the field" in advocacy evaluation, offering a set of guiding principles for the design, approach, and use of real-time advocacy evaluation. Summarizing insights that have emerged in recent years from the literature and from a bourgeoning community of practice of advocacy evaluators, her presentation will highlight common methodological, political and capacity challenges that evaluators face. Finally, as a preface to the concrete examples provided by the other panelists, she'll highlight the primary obstacles that advocates and funders encounter when trying to incorporate real-time advocacy evaluation findings into strategic decision-making.
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Advocacy Evaluation: An Investment in Learning
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| Ehren Reed, Innovation Network, ereed@innonet.org
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Ehren Reed will share two examples of how an advocacy evaluation can be used to promote and inform learning-within foundations and across grantees. Drawing from his experiences leading a state-level effort to expand health coverage and improve health care as well as a federal-level effort to promote immigration reform, Ehren will share insights on how an evaluation can be structured to promote learning for all stakeholders. Topics discussed in this sessions will include: What has worked well and what are the challenges? What kinds of evaluation questions, approaches, and methods are being used? What reporting mechanisms help promote learning and evaluation use?
How can an evaluation effectively balance competing expectations to promote learning for foundations AND grantees?
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A Good Investment? A Funder's Perspective on Advocacy Evaluation
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| Nancy Csuti, The Colorado Trust, nancy@coloradotrust.org
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As a representative of a foundation that funds advocacy, Nancy Csuti will discuss the foundation's reasons for investing in evaluating advocacy grants and what the board and staff expected to achieve through this investment as well as what the ultimate outcome was. Issues of capacity on the part of grantee, evaluator and foundation staff will be discussed as well as lessons learned by the funder on what is required to be an informed consumer of such evaluations. How lessons from the multi-year investment continue to inform future work will be highlighted.
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Looking Back: Return on Investments in Advocacy
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| Lisa Ranghelli, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, lranghelli@ncrp.org
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Lisa Ranghelli will share lessons about evaluating advocacy impact from NCRP's Grantmaking for Community Impact Project. For the project, Lisa developed a retrospective methodology to measure the impacts of foundation funded advocacy, organizing and civic engagement and implemented it with clusters of nonprofits in 7 regions covering 13 states. She will discuss the opportunities and challenges of this type of assessment approach, which used both quantitative and qualitative methods. She will also reflect on the usefulness of the tool, process and findings for funders and advocacy nonprofits.
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