On Sunday October 10th, I attended a Pre-Institute at the Annual Conference for Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families that focused on Evaluating Advocacy and Public Policy. Tanya Beer, Deputy Director, Center for Innovation in Evaluation shared some of the key learnings from her work at the Colorado Trust. Key to her comments was the importance of messaging with the Board/Trustees to shift and expand thinking with regard to evaluating advocacy and public policy and the ways in which it is often different than traditional program evaluation.  Following are the differences Beer noted:

• The model is not static
• Complexity makes attribution difficult
• Timelines can be unpredictable
• Strategies and milestone shift
• Data gathering and resource limitations can be challenging
• Demonstration of contribution is expected not attribution
• Assessing progress is important not just impact
• Integrated or embedded evaluation used for learning (not just accountability)
• Context is critically important  (it is about context not noise)
• Evaluation burden should be minimized

In general, I agree that these are important elements of effective advocacy and public policy evaluation but are they not for program evaluation as well?  Why do we continue to force dichotomies which prevent us from understanding and moving along continuums and which negate the complexity of our work?

Jason Sabo, Senior Vice President of Public Policy, United Way of Texas was one of the plenary speakers at the Annual Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Family Annual Conference in DC. He leads the work at the Texas Legislature on issues related to children, education and human services.  His comments were directed to the grantmakers in the room but they are applicable to all who engage in advocacy issues.

1. FOCUS – Find out what you care about and focus on it.  Make it an issue that resonates with your organization and which you can fully support.  In other words, don’t try and be all things to all people.  Know yourself and commit.

2. FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT – If you don’t know, then find someone who does and listen to them. Ask not your friends, but your “enemies” to do the research. It becomes the new truth.  The messenger DOES matter. Get your numbers and research right.

3. FUND DIVERSE ADVOCACY PARTNERS and HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE -Bring together the unusual suspects.  Create a mixed bag of advocacy partners. It is not enough to make a good point. It is important to win.

4. PATIENCE – There is not time like the present. Incrementalism pays off.  Support over the long haul.  You need time to win.

Some Definitions:

• Simple – Readily understood with limited components.
• Complicated – Not simple but knowable. Interactions can be somewhat controlled. Results including cause and effect can be reasonably predicted by experts.
• Complex – Not simple and never fully knowable. Multiple moving and interacting parts, contexts and factors. Situation difficult to predict and is best understood in retrospect.

In my experience, the words complex and complicated are often used as synonyms for each other.  They are not.

Given the work in which most of our clients engage and the outcomes they desire, it is fairly safe to say that it is not “simple.” But whether it is complex or complicated is often not as easy to ascertain. How do we find out?

In an April 2010 article in the NY Times,  Brenda Zimmerman, a professor at Schulich School of Business in Ontario states “We get seduced by the complicated in Western society. We’re in awe of it and we pull away from the duty to ask simple questions, which we do whenever we deal with matters that are complex.”

I think she is on to something….