Advocacy Evaluation Mini-Toolkit: Tips and Tools for Busy Organizations

To launch your evaluation, you should engage in two foundational exercises: developing an advocacy roadmap, and identifying the evaluation questions that are most important for you to answer.
? An advocacy roadmap. A roadmap is a visual representation of what your ultimate policy goal is, and how you plan to get there. It is fine to think of it either as a logic model or a theory of change – the important thing is that it shows your tactics/activities, the interim outcomes that signal progress toward your ultimate goal, and your ultimate goal. Including in it various contextual factors that will support or hinder your progress can also be helpful. If you haven’t already made one as part of your advocacy effort, it’s time to make one now to kick off your evaluation!
? Evaluation questions. It can be tempting to want to know everything! Trying to answer every evaluation question that your model suggests is the quickest way to get overwhelmed and decide that evaluation is not worth it. Be sure to identify a limited set of evaluation questions, and answer just a few key questions at first – you can always answer more later as you get more comfortable with evaluation.