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What to Discuss with Funders~ Evaluation costs money and will be a line item in your budget. Decide on the appropriate human resources configuration for evaluation and discuss its cost with your grantmaker. Make sure your donor(s) agree that you should dedicate these resources to learning and improving your efforts along the way. ~ Discuss what is already known about your foreign policy advocacy issue and define the ultimate policy goal to make sure you and your funders are on the same page. If this is unclear, your grantmaker may believe that you are measuring progress in the wrong direction. ~ Discuss the innovative components of your foreign policy advocacy campaign. What are the assumptions in the theory of change? Come to an agreement about what assumptions should be evaluated to benefit the campaign with “real-time” formative feedback. Also, determine if evaluating particular assumptions could help other potential grantees. ~ Agree on your benchmarks for both policy and capacity-building Help your grantmaker understand that you will do your best to hit them, but that foreign policy advocacy is often shaped by external events beyond your control. Discuss mechanisms to evaluate your response to external events. See if the grantmaker needs to track anything that you did not mention. Make sure that everything is covered ~ There are no constants in foreign policy advocacy; assure the grantmaker that changes and improvements during the course of the advocacy efforts are signs of learning and capacity building, not signs of failure. Agree that your goal is to learn why targets are met or missed and to be flexible enough to react to these evaluation results and improve the advocacy efforts. ~ An “evaluation to impress” looks pretty, but it will not help your organization or the grantmaker promote effective foreign policy advocacy. |
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