Date: Monday, November 3, 2025
Hello! I’m Charity Anderson, co-founder of Rural Pathways, where I support rural nonprofits with evaluation, grant writing, and program development. With a background in social science research and education policy, I’ve watched small rural organizations do powerful advocacy work, often without recognizing it. In rural areas especially, evaluation itself functions as advocacy.
Rural nonprofits often think they lack capacity for policy influence. Yet they’re already engaging in advocacy work. The childcare provider who shares enrollment data with her state legislator? The community food bank director who documents transportation barriers in grant reports? The literacy program coordinator who tracks reading achievement gaps at community meetings? They’re building evidence for policy change. What’s needed are recognition and documentation systems that make this work visible and actionable.
Log your policy touchpoints. Create a simple spreadsheet to track every interaction with policymakers, legislators, or their staff, even informal ones. Consider a scenario where a rural nonprofit leader mentions program challenges to a town council member in passing. By logging it (e.g., date, decision-maker, issue discussed, materials shared), that organization builds documentation over time. When relevant legislation emerges months later, they have evidence showing they’ve been raising awareness about the issue consistently, positioning themselves as community experts rather than reactive voices.
Capture evidence-from-use. Rural programs often can’t afford randomized trials, but they generate something equally valuable: evidence of how policies work in practice. When organizations serve as implementation sites for new policies (whether childcare tax credits, broadband access programs, or healthcare initiatives), they can document what works and what doesn’t. Which constituents face barriers accessing benefits? What unintended consequences emerge? What works better than expected? This “evidence-from-use” becomes powerful testimony for policy refinement.
Reframe capacity-building as an advocacy outcome. When rural nonprofits participate in evaluation, they build power to influence policy. Imagine a program director who initially views data collection as a compliance task. Through the evaluation process, she learns to analyze patterns in her program data like enrollment trends, service gaps, and demographic shifts. Armed with this analysis, she becomes equipped to present findings at legislative hearings, community forums, or planning meetings. The evaluation process doesn’t just measure outcomes; it creates advocates.
Power dynamics matter in rural contexts. In small communities, informal relationships often matter more than formal advocacy channels. Evaluation practices that document these relationships make visible the advocacy work rural organizations are already doing. This requires evaluators to expand our definition of “policy touchpoints” beyond Capitol visits and legislative testimony.
Start small and simple. Rural nonprofits don’t need complex logic models to begin evaluation-as-advocacy. A one-page log of policy conversations, a quarterly reflection on “what policymakers asked us about,” or a simple database of constituent stories can be enough. The goal is making advocacy work visible, systematic, and therefore stronger over time.
The next time you’re designing an evaluation for a small rural organization, ask: How can this process help them see and document the advocacy work they’re already doing? The answer might transform not just your evaluation, but their sense of what’s possible.
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