Measuring Up: HIV-Related Advocacy Evaluation Training Pack

This evaluation training pack is published by the Alliance and the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO) and consists of two guides - a guide for facilitators and a guide for learners. They are designed for advocacy and monitoring and evaluation staff of civil society organisations (CSOs) (including networks) that are involved in designing, implementing, and assessing advocacy projects at different levels. The purpose of these guides is to increase users’ capacity to evaluate the progress and results of their advocacy work.

The guides aim to:

1. help users to identify and confront the challenges faced by community-based organisations evaluating HIV-related advocacy.
   
2. introduce new thinking for designing advocacy evaluations.
   
3. give users the opportunity to apply some aspects of the evaluation design process to their specific contexts.
4. make users aware that advocacy evaluation is a fast-growing and evolving field, with a large number of publications on advocacy evaluation design, approaches, and methods available via the internet and summarised in the resources section of the learner’s guide.

This facilitator’s guide provides detailed guidance on how to facilitate a three-day or one-day workshop. The workshop can be adapted to be longer than three days by extending the time for key activities and discussion time after presentations and group work.

Key messages for advocacy evaluation from the learners' guide include:

• "It is important to negotiate with donors to design an advocacy evaluation that is realistic and worthwhile, and that is adequately resourced. Engagement of donors in evaluation design is the most effective way to negotiate an effective design.
• Advocacy evaluations need to be flexible and able to adapt to changing circumstances, as does advocacy work itself.
• Since HIV-related advocacy work often has long-term goals, it is appropriate and practical to consider interim advocacy outcomes as significant evaluation results, alongside policy change outcomes and impact.
• Since more than one advocate often contributes to any one advocacy goal, it is reasonable to focus on contribution rather than attribution of advocacy results where necessary.
• Taking the time to develop and articulate a theory of change for your advocacy work will make planning and conducting an evaluation easier.
• Since networks of key populations or nongovernmental organisations are often a ‘means to an end and an end in themselves’ for advocacy work, some evaluation questions can focus on the existence of such a network, or improved effectiveness of the network in terms of the quality of its key internal functions and processes.
• If your advocacy effort has already begun and you already have indicators agreed with donors, do not let this put you off using this guide and following the seven evaluation design framework components presented in Module 3. This may lead you to identify additional interesting and perhaps more useful indicators to measure and track, which will help your ongoing strategy development and demonstrate the success of your advocacy contribution more effectively.
• Most importantly, meaningful advocacy evaluation is possible and achievable, even for small organisations with limited budgets. Even apparently subjective measures, such as changes in the salience or perceived importance of an issue, are able to be measured, given the right planning and framing of the question."

This guide is now available in French. Click here to access the guide in French.