Change Through Advocacy

We believe that more effective advocacy and social change efforts can improve lives. Indeed, we believe that challenging structural and legal constraints on positive change offers far more leverage than improving service delivery. Foundations and individual funders are more likely to support nonprofit advocates who are prepared to plan and assess their efforts. To advocate effectively, nonprofits need:

• funders willing to support advocacy;  
• advocacy knowledge and skills; and the  
• capacity to plan, evaluate, and change course as they go

It’s no news that successful advocacy is difficult. Policy change is complex and often unpredictable. But advocates, their boards, and their funders all want to know whether or not it works. Our consulting work and tools help advocates and their funders know whether they are making a difference, why, or why not.

Evaluating Policy Change

The tools used to evaluate service delivery projects are ill-suited to assessing the impact of policy advocacy.  They lack the flexibility advocates need to respond to fast-moving changes in the policy climate.  And their frequent emphasis on counting outputs rather than assessing outcomes could mean the difference between recording the number of reports distributed and learning what policymakers did differently as a result.  

Assessing the connection from outputs to outcomes and ultimately to impacts on policy – and on people’s lives - means asking ourselves “so what”?  And it means listening honestly to the answer and adjusting strategy accordingly.

Careful planning requires saying as clearly as we can how we think change will happen. That’s fundamental.  But so is recognizing that things won’t go as we think.  With indicators along the way that help tell us which of our assumptions are wrong, advocates – and evaluators and funders – can have honest and timely conversations about how we need to adjust strategy.

Sometimes, that honest conversation includes admitting that we won’t achieve our policy goal this year.  But that conversation can also lead us to recognize the value of the capacity we’ve built in the process; that new capacity can mean success the next time the policy or social change “window of opportunity” opens.