Assessing and Evaluating Change in Advocacy Fields

This white paper aims to bring together emerging ideas about how to assess advocacy fields and evaluate advocacy field building initiatives. Dr. Lynn and other evaluators have developed a core set of dimensions to help organize thinking about these complex advocacy fields, and have begun experimenting with indicators of a strong field, tools for assessing the baseline of a field, and strategies for measuring change in fields. This paper seeks to test and refine some of these ideas. It draws upon several sources of information, including a 2013 convening of evaluators and funders currently funding or interested in advocacy field building, a session at the American Evaluation Association’s 2013 Annual Meeting, ongoing conversations between evaluators working on field-level evaluations currently underway, and an extensive review of literature, much of which has been published during the last few years as the conversation around field building has expanded nationally. It also draws heavily on Dr. Lynn's own experience assessing the current state of an advocacy field in preparation for a field building funding strategy, which she uses as a case study to illustrate approaches and challenges to field assessment throughout the paper.