At a recent client meeting, the Executive Director of a large advocacy and policy organization frustratingly asked, “I wish I had a way to measure our work, in a way that makes sense not only internally, but externally…how can I measure policy and advocacy work?” We hear similar sentiments from the majority of clients, especially those that work on policy and advocacy. Achieving policy change can take years and at the end of the day, is typically measured based on whether or not a piece of legislation has been passed. We, and the people who live and breathe policy and advocacy work, understand that there are many intermediate steps that happen in order to get to that point. From research and coalition building to the eventual vote in the state assembly—all of which, should be and can be measured. Additionally, funders understand that policy change takes time but want to know how and what their grantees are doing to achieve policy change. 

Mission Measurement has developed a useful tool to help measure the progress of policy and advocacy work so that advocates can communicate their progress beyond the number of votes received and the number of petitions signed. Using our tool, organizations have been able to track their progress using a series of milestones and tailored criteria to signify how they are moving towards their immediate, intermediate, and long-term goals. 

For example, an early childhood education advocacy group working towards increased access to early education understands that in order to achieve that long-term goal, they have some intermediate steps to achieve such as research, coalition-building, and sustained infrastructure for the issue of early childhood education; under each step, they develop a set of key criteria that let the group know whether or not they’ve successfully completed that step. If the intermediate goal is to build coalitions, the advocacy group will need to determine which groups to target, how many, and set a timeline for when those relationships should be developed. Communicating progress along this continuum, describing the steps and stages of that progress, allows policy directors to answer the questions “so what” and “to what end?” They can tell funders and other stakeholders that the purpose of multiple meetings with the same key state policymakers is to build a coalition of supporters of the cause, which will then lead to momentum-building and a sustained infrastructure to support the issue, which will ultimately lead to policy change.  

Advocacy and policy work can be difficult to measure, but certainly not impossible.