Monitoring and evaluating advocacy: a scoping study

In response to ActionAid’s new strategy, Fighting Poverty Together, this scooping study attempts to identify and document how various agencies and institutions have approached the assessment of advocacy, focusing particularly on approaches of NGOs.

The study identifies a number of aspects that need to be taken into account when analysing advocacy work:

• identifying the different dimensions of advocacy work and their outcomes
• recognising that advocacy can work at different levels which may reinforce each other
• monitoring processes and outcomes
• frameworks should be seen as tools for facilitating creative thinking
• policy change and implementation should be monitored
• the collective nature of advocacy work should be acknowledged
• values of ActionAid should determine the nature of monitoring and evaluation, and determine who participates.

This scoping study also identifies various gaps in the knowledge on how to effectively monitor and evaluate advocacy work. These include:

• more information on networks and movements
• better understanding of how to work at different levels and in different arenas in order to reinforce the work of others in the most effective way
• better understanding how the work of different actors adds to the process, without trying to claim attribution at the expense of co-operation
• how to best support civil society in the longer term to both advocate for pro-poor policies and monitor implementation
• understanding of how to monitor and evaluate social capital in different contexts is limited
• better understanding of the conflicting aspects and political consequences of advocacy work is needed
• information on the nature of ‘space’, ‘political space’ or ‘democratic space’ in different cultures and levels, at the micro to the international level are limited
• information on how to incorporate gender issues into these frameworks is limited.