Advocacy Evaluation in Action: An Interview with Rhonda Schlangen

Innovation Network interviewed Rhonda Schlangen of Planned Parenthood Federation of America earlier this year as a Featured Advocate. This interview is an update on her activities.

InnoNet: Rhonda, thanks for giving us this opportunity to check in with you. What have you been doing related to advocacy evaluation since we last spoke?

Rhonda: Actually, since we last spoke my position has changed. I’m now doing Monitoring and Evaluation (“M&E”) for Planned Parenthood’s International Division, so I will be working with our developing country partners on evaluation of their advocacy efforts as well as their service delivery work.

Our regional offices work with NGO partners in the global south—what has, in the past, been referred to as the third world. These partners are characteristically innovative and risk-taking, but small and relatively young organizations. Many of these groups are increasingly engaging in public policy advocacy at the national level.

We are also supporting some new advocacy networks. These organizations need and want capacity-building in advocacy and advocacy evaluation (or M&E in the international context), and their ideas and approaches are very fresh and bold, which bodes well for an exciting collaboration. Working with these groups and networks from the ground up also provides us with an opportunity to integrate M&E from the first stages of planning. That is not to underplay the challenges—that advocacy and policy change environments have to be understood in a cross-cultural context, and channeling the ambitions of enthusiastic, committed partners into focused policy aims and measurable outcomes is a long-term challenge.

InnoNet: How and why did you become involved in your service area?

Rhonda: In the past, I have been involved in most elements of advocacy: I worked for a legislator; I have been a lobbyist; I have been involved in grassroots work, etc. At one point when I was a lobbyist, a donor asked how my organization evaluated the effectiveness of our advocacy work, since counting votes supporting a desired policy does not speak to effectiveness. After that conversation, I started to set up some systems to evaluate our advocacy progress.

In order to do this I started to educate myself on evaluation. Coming at it from my background (as that of an advocate), I was puzzled to see advocacy evaluation really wasn't being done. I was even told by a donor that it was impossible—that you could not establish a relationship between a vote and an advocacy effort so it was not worth trying.

I thought evaluation was a responsibility—knowing whether you actually did what you started out to do and whether you did so effectively. So, in my time with PPFA's international division, and with very positive support from our leadership, I have been working to integrate evaluation with our advocacy efforts.

InnoNet: How does PPFA use advocacy? Can you share examples of advocacy successes?

Rhonda: PPFA works for policy change in support of sound sexual and reproductive health and rights policies throughout the world. In the U.S., the International Division works at two levels. We work in Washington, D.C. to educate policymakers and their staff about sexual and reproductive health policy, and we work around the country through Planned Parenthood Federation of America local affiliates to incorporate international issues into their public policy work. A majority of local affiliates are interested in supporting global sexual/reproductive health advocacy in their work—and we help them do that. We are working with them to reach out to their communities to generate activism and advocacy on the behalf of sound policies.

InnoNet: How do you think evaluation affects advocacy?

Rhonda: Evaluation absolutely affects our ability to plan for advocacy. In my own part of the organization—I am in my 8th year with PPFA—planning has been revolutionized. Advocacy tends to focus on action—advocacy work by nature is very nimble and fluid according to the external environment. Therefore, planning has been focused on what we're going to do—the action we're going to take. However, planning tended not to be anchored in an explicit theory of change or focused on outcomes—what will change as a result of those actions. Advocates usually intuitively know these things. Evaluation is making that explicit.

Planning that integrates evaluation fills in those blanks and gives us a mechanism to test our assumptions, ask the hard questions, and obviously to monitor our progress. If we set up our advocacy activities correctly, we can consistently monitor against benchmarks we have set for ourselves. Evaluation enables us to test our strategies and helps us to assure our resources, which are limited, are being used to the most effect. Evaluation tightens our approaches.

Since we are unable to claim causality (i.e., confidently know exactly which organization's advocacy efforts brought about success), at the end of the day, it is hard to attribute what was the factor that caused the policymaker to vote the way they did. But we can use evaluation to review chain of influence that leads to policy change and test our strategies and methodologies.

InnoNet: Do you have any advice to share with others about evaluating their advocacy efforts?

Rhonda: Encouragement—advocacy evaluation is a rewarding undertaking. The process creates focus. It allows us to use our resources more efficiently. Though it is difficult to prove causation, evaluating your efforts is still important. Advocacy relies on influencing a chain of events that ultimately causes action in support of your policy target. It's a long chain of events with many external influences, but evaluation allows us to test our strategies. Is this approach attracting more supporters? What are effective ways to engage young advocates? At the other end of the chain of influence—the policymakers—it can be difficult or impossible in the US political context to assess why each policymaker voted the way they did.

Our European counterparts apparently have more access to policymakers and are able to get direct feedback on their efforts to help assess their work. Since that is not the case in the U.S.—mostly because of the political context—it is more difficult to arrive at knowing how we influenced that final link of the chain. Evaluation helps us detect patterns and develop models. It is also an issue of fiscal responsibility. Advocacy is an important part of what PPFA's International Division does and, ultimately, evaluating those efforts helps ensure we are accountable to the people we are committed to serving.

InnoNet: What do you think is needed to move the field of advocacy evaluation forward?

Rhonda: I think two things are needed to move the field forward. First, there is the piece of needing evaluators out there who have experience doing advocacy—it is an alignment issue. The goal is a marriage of sound evaluation practice with the current culture of advocacy. We need people who can integrate those two pieces: being an evaluator and being an advocate. The second piece is that advocacy organizations need an increased understanding about the benefits of evaluation. For years it seems evaluation wasn't done because of the nature of advocacy—and advocacy planning focuses on being fluid and nimble. Evaluation has to be demonstrated to be beneficial and to add to the skill-set of staff people—something that helps advocates to work more effectively. It is a limited resource environment. Ultimately, you need to make the case that evaluation is worth it.

InnoNet: Rhonda, thank you again for your sharing your experiences with us. We look forward to our next conversation.

To become a Featured Advocate, please email info [at] innonet.org.

>> See all Featured Advocate interviews