Continuity does not end — advocacy is an ongoing learning process of planning, reflecting and acting.

Advocacy efforts must be evaluated in the same way as any other communication campaign. Since advocacy often only provides partial results, an advocacy team needs to monitor and measure regularly and objectively what has been accomplished and what more remains to be done.

Monitoring is the measurement of progress towards the achievement of set objectives, noting which activities are going well and which are not. Evaluation is about judging the quality and impact of activities. Evaluation asks why some actions went well and others did not, and why some activities had the desired impact while others did not. Both process evaluation (how you worked) and impact evaluation (what changed) need to be considered (see Planning module).

There are numerous ways of monitoring and evaluating advocacy work. Methods can be:

• qualitative (e.g. case studies, stories, opinions, survey questionnaires);
• quantitative (e.g. statistics or trends that indicate a change over time).

Monitoring methods should be chosen according to the indicators that you have selected to evaluate the impact of your work. Monitoring methods may include:

• keeping records of meetings, correspondence or conversations with target audiences and the responses elicited;
• tracking when your key messages or briefing notes are used by elected officials, other key influencers or the media;
• carrying out surveys and interviews to determine the impact your actions have had and the recognition they have received;
• monitoring the media and keeping track of coverage of your topic in the media.

Evaluation should be based on the goals and objectives that were set at the outset of the advocacy planning process. Questions that you might ask in order to evaluate the impact of your work are as follows:

• Have you achieved your objectives?
• How many meetings have you had with key target decision-makers and what were the outcomes of those meetings?
• What actions were taken by these target decision-makers?
• Is the situation better than before? By how much?
• If there is no change, how might you change your advocacy methods?
• What would you do differently next time?
• Are the people involved with the advocacy effort happy with the results and the way the work was implemented? Are they still involved?

Advocacy is often an ongoing process. Thus rather than simply aiming for a single policy or piece of legislation, advocacy plans may have multiple or even changing goals and objectives. Ideally then, advocacy plans should be designed to be sustainable over time. Planning for continuity means articulating long-term goals, keeping functional coalitions together and adjusting advocacy methods as situations change.

Over the long term, you will need to evaluate the situations that result from advocacy activities. Possible scenarios, and recommended courses of action, are:

• If desired policy changes occur, monitor their implementation.
• If desired policy changes do not occur, review previous advocacy strategy and action, revise the strategy, enact a new advocacy process or identify other actions to be taken.
• Develop plans to sustain or reinforce the desired change.