The Advocacy Evaluation Project hopes to move the field of advocacy evaluation beyond assessing policy change into one that considers more fundamental and contributory components of advocacy efforts: capacity building, network formation, relationship building, communication, issue framing, leadership development.

Phase I (completed December 2006)
The highlight of our Phase I work is the Advocacy Evaluation Resource Center. The Resource Center increased in size from nothing to having more than 80 resources available for free. The Resource Center includes reports, articles, tools, and frameworks. Many of the resources are drawn from other notable organizations also engaged in advocacy evaluation, such as the California Endowment, Alliance for Justice, Women’s Funding Network, Just Associates, and the Communications Consortium Media Center.

Also during Phase I, InnoNet assembled an Advisory Board to help guide and inform our work. Our Advisory Board Members are a diverse group of professionals who represent views from three different stakeholder communities--funders, practitioners, and evaluators.

Phase II (January 2007-December 2007)
The second phase of the Advocacy Evaluation Project will enable us to expand the Advocacy Evaluation Project website through feature and capability enhancements, sustained data collection efforts, and continued display of helpful resources for the field.

Advocacy evaluation is continuing to attract attention as an area of growing need for the nonprofit sector. The topic was on the minds of many participants in the November 2006 American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference. Several conference sessions were either directly or indirectly focused on advocacy evaluation. InnoNet’s own advocacy evaluation session at AEA was presented by Jennifer Bagnell Stuart and Ehren Reed to a standing-room-only crowd and spurred lively conversation. During the 2006 AEA conference, individuals interested in advocacy evaluation formed a new Topical Interest Group (TIG) around advocacy evaluation, of which Ehren is now the Program Co-Chair.

But interest in advocacy evaluation goes beyond evaluators. Funders, service providers, and other nonprofit practitioners are interested in advocacy evaluation trainings and assistance. This truly is an area of growing interest and demand for resources and tools—a demand InnoNet hopes to meet through this project.

Have a question about evaluating your advocacy work? Contact us!