Is Your Campaign Working? Here's One Way to Find Out

Evaluation of communications is a growing field as the social sector devotes more resources to strategic communications and how outreach and advocacy efforts contribute to the achievement of their goals. Cause believes evaluation is critical to identify what is working and provide more evidence that communications does move the needle for organizations and issues. Our evaluation work ranges from formative evaluations, which monitor ongoing progress to provide feedback that can be used to optimize strategies and tactics that are working, to evaluations that summarize and look back on past efforts to identify lessons learned and impact of the project or campaign.

A few examples from recent work includes:

Assessment of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s long term investment in communications support for several grantees. We looked at how the grants for communications impacted the way the organization worked, the skills of the staff, as well as the results from the media and public relations strategies and tactics, such as the perception and standing of the organization in the minds of opinion leaders and policymakers and their use of the materials produced by the organization.
We have also conducted assessments for other foundations that looked at the results of grantee trainings and other capacity building building programs as well as audits of the Foundation’s own communications and what it was accomplishing.
Audit and analysis of an issue’s coverage in the media using content analysis of TV, print, online media and social media to get an understanding of the current public dialogue. We then used the information to provide recommendations to a coalition on suggested areas of focus and opportunities for future campaigns.

Comprehensive evaluations by external consultants are great, but you can also do lots yourself using information you already collect or with small adjustments. What makes assessment useful is the regular practice of stepping back, reflecting on what has been done and using data (both qualitative and quantitative) to inform decisions for future plans. So, it is more about making time to plan what you want to assess, collect and then analyze even if it is on a small scale.

You can find more about communications evaluation at:

www.MeasureMyImpact.org – A few years ago Cause, with the support of The California Endowment, assembled a collection of the existing practical tools to nonprofit evaluate advocacy communications. Includes a self assessment to help direct you to resources most appropriate for your organization.
Julia Coffman’s Communications Audit paper – a how-to for conducting a communications audit
Are We There Yet Communications Plan – a good general guide to evaluation
Innovation Network K Point – A resource library of Practical Tools for Planning, Evaluation, and Action
Communications Consortium Media Evaluation resources – A series of toolkit working briefs that provide guidance on several types of media evaluation.
Beth Kanter’s blog has great guidance on social media evaluation

If you would like to speak to someone at Cause about how you might use evaluation please contact Marie Condron, General Manager at 310.656.1001

Is Your Campaign Working? Here’s One Way to Find Out