The Challenge of Assessing Policy and Advocacy Activities: Strategies for a Prospective Evaluation Approach

Foundations and nonprofits today face a growing need to measure the outcomes of their efforts to improve society. For the majority of nonprofits that focus on direct services and their funders, measuring impact has moved beyond merely counting the number of people served toward understanding the relevant changes in service recipients’ attitudes, awareness and behaviors. Documenting the connections between increased services funded by a foundation and increased social change has been relatively straightforward.

Originally prepared for The California Endowment, this paper presents a recommended approach to policy change evaluation. The foundation, one of the largest health funders in the country, is increasingly funding policy change and advocacy work. This research began
as an effort to inform the foundation’s evaluation planning around those issues. However, The Endowment’s goals and challenges are not unique. The analysis and proposed strategies addressed here should prove useful to a variety of foundations, evaluators and policy analysts with an interest in advocacy and policy change.