Amplifying Nonprofit Voices:
Bridging the Advocacy Evaluation Gap
Understandably, nonprofits want to know the impact they are having and where progress toward their goals has been made, but impact can be hard to measure, and gaining an unbiased perspective often means facing significant hurdles. This is likely the reason why, despite the benefits of assessing one’s efforts, most organizations struggle to accurately evaluate their work and make informed adjustments that improve success. In an attempt to better understand the current advocacy and policy change evaluation landscape, and provide concrete actions for building nonprofit advocates’ evaluation capacity, authors Annette Gardner, Shannon Williams, and Susan Hoechstetter conducted a survey asking advocates about their advocacy practices and experiences with evaluation. Their findings, published in this report, reveal a comprehensive and detailed picture of the challenges and opportunities that nonprofits face with regard to evaluating their advocacy, and assessing their strategies and tactics.
Whimsical, hand-drawn illustrations deliver moments of levity and lightheartedness, and become elements of contrast when compared to the conventional data-driven content seen in the charts and graphs that make up a majority of the presentation. Color is used quietly, but purposefully to visually separate information and add depth to the design. A key takeaway for readers comes in the form of six recommendations describing specific approaches that will be most impactful in terms of building and expanding nonprofits’ advocacy evaluation capacity. To identify and further distinguish each of these targeted suggestions, six unique icons were created and used throughout the report (see above).
