Three Levels of Public Policy Assessment
Generally, there are three levels for assessing public policy efforts:
- Institutional level (changes in policy enactment and implementation)
- Community level (social capital; how a community views an issue)
- Organizational level (organization's capacity to impact public policy)
Case Studies
In 2004, NCG commissioned a report on evaluating public policy grantmaking: Evaluating Philanthropic Support of Public Policy Advocacy: A Resource for Funders. The report details six case studies on assessing public policy grantmaking:
The case studies highlight the following lessons learned:
- Combining quantitative and qualitative data strengthens evaluation efforts.
- When possible, indicators should be based in a strong theory of change or long-term strategy.
- Policy advocacy evaluations should focus more on improving practice than on improving impact (or on both). Evaluation should adopt a continuance improvement model which frames the process as "performance improvement" rather than "evaluation."
- Value narratives and storytelling in evaluation.
- Measuring collaboration is critical to advocacy assessment.
- Evaluations must take into account the dynamic policy environment.
- Evaluations should monitor the depth and sophistication of advocacy strategies.
- Grantees should be involved in evaluation design.
- Evaluations can be used to build grantee capacity.
- Discerning attribution is difficult but not impossible.
- Evaluations should include an assessment of the funder's role.
- Evaluations should measure policymaker perceptions.
- Evaluations must recognize the relationship and tension between producing policy results and constituency building.
- Evaluations must distinguish between membership and leadership development.
- Evaluations should include the broader community.
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