Sector: Nonprofit

Without legal advocacy, many norms and rights that people rely on, may have never been established. School desegregation (argued through Brown v. Board of Education), gay marriage (argued through many cases, but before the Supreme Court as Obergefell v. Hodges), clean water and air (argued at both state and federal levels as a myriad of lawsuits) – all were established as part of a legal advocacy strategy.

As an evaluator, I have seen varying levels of commitment to using principles of DEI and acknowledge that it is not always an easy or straightforward endeavor. Here are a few clarifying points on how I frame thinking about DEI and some guiding questions to discuss when thinking about incorporating DEI in your work:

There are four key stages in the use of media. These stages include design, development, distribution and reflection. In this piece, we discuss the importance of design and the impact evaluation can have in this stage in creating a successful campaign, and subsequently detail the process.

For NGOs with offices in a wide variety of geographic locations, establishing a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system that works for both the headquarters office and field offices can be a real challenge. If those offices operate in different countries, that challenge becomes even harder. Learn how Hand in Hand International (HiH), supported through Johnson & Johnson’s Healthy Futures evaluation capacity-building program, piloted a measurement framework in Eastern Africa, Afghanistan, and London that allows it to have a greater understanding of what is needed to achieve their desired impact and how that varies by region.

I’ve always had an inherent appreciation for diversity – yet my training and work in the evaluation space has fostered even greater realization that diversity is a critical component to both program design and evaluation. In my work, I’ve had to assess how people are experiencing programs and whether those experiences match what was intended. Naturally, I’ve been exposed to and come to understand realities and points of view different than my own. I see this call for cultural responsiveness as being relevant to not only evaluators, but program staff as well…

What can media accomplish? What can it affect? These are questions funders often ask. Restating those questions from an evaluation perspective translates to: how can one measure the impact of media? To understand how to measure media, we must first understand the strategy behind media.