Advocacy plans are like a long road trip. Along any road trip, you will have a series of slow-downs and rest stops. But similar to advocacy efforts, these setbacks shouldn’t prevent you from taking the journey. Expecting and planning for those slow-downs is crucial when measuring the success of your advocacy efforts. Knowing what led to setbacks, and how to prepare for them in the future, will help guide future advocacy efforts to your final destination of success.

In order to assess your advocacy success, you need to know who will be on the road with you.

  • Mile Markers and Rest Stops The key to measuring the success of advocacy is looking at the baby steps before you run a marathon. Every mile marker passed is one closer to your destination.
  • Check your Instruments/Gauges Measuring those little wins is crucial, but how do you quantify them? One way to track the change in support in lawmakers is to map them (check out this handy feature by our partner, Quorum).
  • Course Correct / On the Wrong Pathway As you measure the success of your advocacy efforts, it is equally important to evaluate whether to course-correct. If your advocacy efforts appear to be moving in the wrong direction, it’s important to look at what indicators you have at your fingertips to determine whether those contributing factors are within your control.
  • Dead End Ahead The best advocacy organizations are those that can look ahead and determine that the smartest thing they can do is decide that there is no path forward.
  • The Destination Matters, But So Does the Journey Measuring the success of your advocacy efforts not only helps your organization course-correct and improve that particular advocacy plan, it also helps your organization practice and improve upon the skills needed to do that course-correction.

Read the full article about advocacy success by Rebecca Vucic at Independent Sector.