Civil society organisations, networks and development agencies invest heavily in changing policies, budgets and public attitudes, and in building coalitions to do it. Yet evaluations of this work often fall back on counting meetings and publications, which says little about whether decision makers actually shifted. Funders increasingly ask for credible evidence of influence and of the added value of partnering, and weak answers put future funding at risk.

This training course equips participants to monitor and evaluate work where results are indirect, delayed and shared. It starts by clarifying what advocacy is trying to change and how, using theories of change and policy influence pathways. It then introduces approaches suited to complex change, including outcome harvesting, contribution analysis, process tracing, policy tracking and media and social media analysis, alongside practical indicator design. A dedicated section deals with partnerships and coalitions, looking at relationship quality, shared accountability, capacity strengthening and the cost and benefit of collaboration.

Participants work through case material from real-world campaign settings and develop their own monitoring plans during the sessions. They finish with a framework, a set of tools and a communication approach that turns messy evidence into clear findings for boards, partners and donors.

Participants completing this course will be able to:

• Build a theory of change for an advocacy or policy influence initiative.
• Map stakeholders and decision makers and analyse power to focus monitoring effort.
• Select qualitative and quantitative indicators for policy change, public engagement and coalition strength.
• Apply outcome harvesting and most significant change to capture unplanned results.
• Use contribution analysis and process tracing to test claims about influence.
• Assess the health, value and results of partnerships and consortia.
• Manage ethical and safety concerns when evaluating sensitive advocacy work.
• Translate findings into learning, adaptation and donor reporting.

This course is suited to people who plan, run, fund or assess influencing and partnership work, such as:

• Monitoring, evaluation and learning officers in NGOs
• Advocacy, campaigns and policy managers
• Programme managers in coalitions and civil society networks
• Partnership and alliance managers
• Donor and development agency programme officers
• Government staff engaged in policy dialogue with civil society
• Research and think-tank staff working on policy uptake
• Independent evaluators and consultants

By the close of the programme, participants hold:

• A theory of change and pathway diagram for their own advocacy initiative.
• A draft monitoring framework with indicators suited to hard-to-measure results.
• Step-by-step guides for outcome harvesting and contribution analysis.
• A partnership assessment tool they can use with consortium members.
• A template for a learning brief that links evidence to decisions.

Sessions favour doing over lecturing, with methods taught through application. The format includes:

• Case files from health, land, education and budget advocacy campaigns
• Guided practice with outcome harvesting and contribution analysis templates
• Group clinics where each participant builds a framework for a live initiative
• Peer review of indicators and evidence claims
• Short facilitator inputs on ethics and data quality

Vision Reach Global Consultancy issues a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion to every participant who attends the programme and completes the practical assignments, recognising their skills in evaluating advocacy and partnerships.