Upcoming Events:

On "Assessing Advocacy"

Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 | 8:15 - 9:45AM | The Aspen Institute, One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036

Please RSVP here by July 5th.

In "Assessing Advocacy," published in the Spring 2013 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, lead author Nathan Huttner outlines a structured approach to assessing advocacy campaigns. Nathan and his fellow partners at Redstone Strategy Group have used the approach to help leading philanthropies, advocates, and research institutions as they plan and evaluate their investments in advocacy aimed at social change.  At this Advocacy Evaluation Breakfast, Nathan will discuss the assessment approach, the research and experiences upon which it is built, pitfalls that have been encountered, and how funders and NGOs have used advocacy assessment to navigate the tricky territory of applying rigorous thinking to the inherently uncertain world of advocacy.  Julia Coffman, Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation, will offer a response.

Nathan Huttner: As an associate principal at Redstone, Nathan has led projects on many topics, including health, education, energy, and climate.  In particular, he has significant experience designing and evaluating hard-to-assess advocacy strategies in rapidly changing environments such as those surrounding US K-12 education, or global climate change.  Nathan earned a BA from Yale College with distinction in Economics, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management, where he received 19 distinctions in two years.  Between college and graduate school, Nathan was an associate at Katzenbach Partners, a strategy consulting firm founded by former partners of McKinsey and Company.  Nathan is a director of the Elmseed Fund.

Julia Coffman: Julia has more than 20 years of experience as an evaluator, and now specializes in the evaluation of advocacy, public policy, and systems change efforts.  For 15 years Julia worked with the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), a research and evaluation organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Julia led HFRP’s evaluation work for over a decade, which included evaluating foundation and nonprofit initiatives and publishing The Evaluation Exchange, a nationally renowned periodical on emerging evaluation strategies and issues.  Julia frequently writes and speaks about evaluation. She is the founder and former co-chair of the American Evaluation Association’s Advocacy and Policy Change Topical Interest Group.  Julia received her graduate degree in justice studies from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Aspen Institute has over 60 years of experience facilitating dialogue on challenging public policy issues.  Through our Advocacy Evaluation Breakfast Series, we bring together innovative experts who are reshaping and redefining the growing field of advocacy evaluation.  Explore past events in this collaborative series.

Recent Trainings and Presentations:

04.16.2013

The Advocacy Progress Planner: A Tool for Advocates and Evaluators

APEP's Robert Medina and Angbeen Saleem led a 45-minute workshop at the Eastern Evaluation Research Society's Annual Conference on the Advocacy Progress Planner. Robert and Angbeen presented on APEP's "lessons learned" on evaluating advocacy and proceeded to walk the audience through the Planner's multiple sections. Audience members then worked collaborative on sample Planners for a hypothetical advocacy campaign.

10.27.2012

Towards a Consensus on Nomenclature and Standards on Advocacy Evaluation

While advocacy has been around since humans were first able to give voice to different opinions, the evaluation of advocacy efforts is still very much in its infancy. The evaluation challenges that advocacy poses are typical of complex social change processes. They include: frequent use of networks and coalitions; different stakeholders holding multiple objectives that may be mutually exclusive; strategy and tactics are highly context-specific; and cause and effect can rarely be attributed. But the field needs some structure in the face of this "rich messiness." APEP's David Devlin-Foltz joined Tayo Fabusuyi of Numeritics in leading a small group discussion, or "think tank," about advocacy evaluation nomenclarure and standards at the American Evaluation Association's 2012 Conference. 

10.27.2012

Foundation-driven, Multi-grantee Advocacy Efforts: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

In a panel on "Evaluating Advocacy Partnerships" at the American Evaluation Association's 2012 Conference, David Devlin-Foltz discussed APEP's experience as evaluator of several foundation-initiated or foundation-driven advocacy collaboratives. These vary in the degree of foundation influence over collective advocacy strategy, and in the administrative and managerial arrangements that govern the relationships among the actors. They differ as well in the institutions and processes that they seek to influence. But in every case, APEP’s role included helping clients define more clearly their objectives and to examine how their working relationships affected grantees’ ability to achieve these objectives. Bottom line: Sometimes arranged marriages can work.

10.25.2012

What Are We Learning From Education Nation?

In this presentation, part of a panel titled "Media Matters. Sure, but How Much?" at the American Evaluation Association's 2012 Conference, David Devlin-Foltz described APEP's collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and NBC News to assess the possible impact of their Education Nation initiative. David reported on how the APEP team applied focus groups, surveys, interviews, “champion tracking,” and qualitative and quantitative media content analysis to help NBC News and the Gates Foundation shape and learn from the Education Nation initiative.

05.03.2012

Creating and Measuring Interim Policy Objectives

Waiting until the end of a policy campaign to conduct an evaluation can mean losing opportunities to learn from the advocacy experience. And measuring only changes in law or regulations can miss over advances important to policy change. In a webinar for Independent Sector, David Devlin-Foltz and Robert Medina presented on how to define and track meaningful and measurable progress toward interim objectives for policy change. David and Robert walked folks through APEP's Advocacy Progress Planner, a tool specifically designed to help advocates develop a plan flexible enough to reflect the changing dynamics so common in policy advocacy work.

02.27.2012

When Success is More Than a Bill: Taking Your Advocacy Plans to the Next Level 

We all know careful planning is critical to success at any level, but planning for advocacy can be particularly tricky, especially when Congress is deadlocked and public policy successes are few and far between. How can you develop a creative advocacy strategy that you can sell to your senior staff and board of directors? What should you measure? How should you measure it? What audiences and stakeholders do you need to mobilize? As part of a panel at the 2012 National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, David Devlin-Foltz co-presented on how you can create and execute an advocacy strategy that has impact but isn’t dependent on policy change.

11.05.2011

Learning As We Go, But Are We Going Far Enough?

Even the best benchmarks tell us nothing unless we have reliable data about progress. At this panel, part of the American Evaluation Association's 2011 conference, David Devlin-Foltz presented on the challenge of identifying and using benchmarks that are both meaningful and measurable. .

11.03.2011

Using Developmental Evaluation for Better Coalition Advocacy on Disability and Reproductive Health Issues

As part of a panel at the American Evaluation Association's conference in Anaheim, CA, David Devlin-Foltz drew on various examples from APEP consulting work, particularly our projects on reproductive health - all in their relatively early stages - to discuss how a developmental evaluation approach can contribute to coalitional advocacy.

11.03.2011

The Advocacy Progress Planner: A Planning and Evaluation Tool for Advocates and Funders

Lisa Molinaro demonstrated the APP tool, highlighted new features from the 2011 re-launch, and discussed examples of how funders and advocates have benefited from incorporating the tool into their work. This presentation was part of the American Evaluation Association's annual conference.

04.07.2011

The New - and Improved - Advocacy Progress Planner

David Devlin-Foltz demonstrated the latest version 2.0 of the APP, building on three years of user feedback. This presentation was a coffee break webinar of the American Evaluation Association.

12.10.2010

From Evidence to Influence: The Sequel

Carlisle Levine (CARE), Lisa Molinaro (Continuous Progress Strategic Services), and Veena Pankaj (Innovation Network) updated participants on a collaborative evaluation effort to help CARE use its field experience to influence policy change.

11.12.2010

American Evaluation Association Annual Conference

David Devlin-Foltz and Lisa Molinaro, Panelists: How Does Evidence Influence Policy Change? Examining Two Complementary Approaches With Two Complementary Evaluations
 
11.6.2010

Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights
David Devlin-Foltz Presentation: Impact Evaluation: From a Culture of Lying to a Culture of Learning
 
9.21.2010

CFED Pre-Conference Workshop
David Devlin-Foltz Presentation: Challenges of State Coalition Advocacy

08.18.2010
InterAction Outreach Communications Working Group
David Devlin-Foltz presentation: Champions and “Champion-ness” 

03.23.2010
American Evaluation Association
Lisa Molinaro "coffee-break" webinar featuring the Advocacy Progress Planner

03.05.2010
CFED Annual Staff Summit
David Devlin-Foltz presentation on Advocacy: So What?

11.20.2009
Spitfire Strategies workshop for foundation program officers
David Devlin-Foltz presentation on measuring champions for policy change

11.13.2009
The American Evaluation Association
Advocacy Evaluation: Identifying and Using Interim Outcomes to Tell the Whole Story

11.13.2009
Body of Evidence or Firsthand Experience? Evaluation of Two Concurrent and Overlapping Advocacy Initiatives

11.10.2009
Grantmakers East Forum
David Devlin-Foltz: Prioritizing Advocacy versus Service Delivery

10.21.2009
US-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership
David Devlin-Foltz on Measuring advocacy impact on cross-border challenges

09.18.2009
KnowHow2GO Policy Day
Lisa Molinaro, Advocacy Progress Planner demonstration