Advocacy_Index_One_Pager.pdf

The Advocacy Index

Advocacy is the action or process by a person/group to support a particular cause or policy. Many of OTI’s programs seek to develop the advocacy knowledge, skills and experience of individuals and nascent groups. But how do we know that the capacity building support is empowering the group to push forward their cause? We can measure what they learned, but how do we know they actually are putting into practice their new skills?

The concept of the Advocacy Index is outlined in pages 260–262 of the August 1998 “Handbook of Democracy and Governance Program Indicators,” Technical Publication Series. The Index was developed as a multi-component index for measuring NGO/CSO capacity for and performance in advocacy. OTI’s very own John Rigby modified and made operational the index as COP for a Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS program, as a tool to answer impact-related questions, monitor CSO advocacy progress, and focus technical assistance. (For more information see AdvocacyCAT3 below.)

OTI has been working in Lebanon since 2007 to promote peace and stability in Lebanon. The current objectives of the Lebanon Civic Support Initiative (LCSI) are to provide youth with alternatives to extremism and enhance civil society organizations' capacity to advocate for local or national issues. These objectives contribute to USG efforts to preserve democratic space and strengthen Lebanon's fragile civil peace. LCSI is using a version of the Advocacy Index that has been customized to the Lebanese context and to work within OTI’s relatively short-term grant cycle to assess their partners’ ability to advocate for local or national issues.

The LCSI Advocacy Index measures partner capacity to advocate before and after every advocacy grant. The index assesses partners on a scale from 0-6 in five competency areas: coalition building and NGO linkages, outreach, engagement with decision makers, data research and analysis, and policy development. The selection of the five competency areas was strategic and designed to address the main contextual challenges that advocacy programming encounters in Lebanon. For example, the limited access to data and poor data quality were addressed by focusing on data research and analysis as one of the five competency areas.

By employing the concept of “learn by doing,” the advocacy grants allow CSOs to learn advocacy skills by carrying out small projects or campaigns. Similarly, the index measures a CSO’s experience in implementing the competency areas rather than theoretical knowledge related to them. Through the use of local advocacy trainers for each grantee, LCSI provides technical assistance but also gathers information about where each CSO needs additional training. To enhance the capacity of CSOs in the five competency areas, the LCSI team developed a number of targeted skills trainings. To enhance data research and analysis, the team developed (or is in the process of developing) trainings on conducting focus group; mining and analyzing public data from the internet; basic quantitative research techniques, data collection from alternative sources, etc.

The index is first used to gather baseline information on the CSOs’ advocacy capacity, which is later compared to data gathered after the implementation of each grant. The CSO representatives fill in the developed questionnaire and score themselves from 0-6 based on what best describes their capacity in each of the five competency areas. Interviewers afterwards discuss the questionnaire with the CSO and give a final mark for each competency area. An average is counted and the results are shared with the trainer and LCSI Advocacy Team. As of January 2012, 22 partners have been assessed and the index is continuously fine-tuned for effectiveness. The analysis has shown that on average a CSO’s capacity to advocate increased by 65% after the implementation of the LCSI grant.

The tool has also allowed the Advocacy Team to better assess in which of the five competency areas the CSO needs additional technical assistance. Through this process, they were able to quantitatively show that Policy Development is the lagging competency across the board. To enhance this skill, the team supported the Youth Economic Forum to work with youth and CSOs nationwide to build their capacity to develop policy alternatives. Coalition building and NGO linkages is also an identified competency area that is always in need of improvement. To respond to this need, LCSI has created a variety of innovative and diverse activities that establish linkages between national, larger, more experienced, Beirut-based NGOs and local smaller groups with like-minded ideas. These various initiatives empower local CSOs to be a part of a national network and increase the reach of national NGOs who normally don’t get out of the capital. The LCSI team also uses the outcomes of the Advocacy Index to further focus assistance to CSOs that have shown the greatest potential to be successful advocates.

If you wish to learn more about LCSI and the amazing work they are doing using the Advocacy Index to measure the impact of advocacy-related programming, feel free to contact Marialice Ariens. Available to download are a Q&A sheet about the Advocacy Index, the English and the Arabic versions of the tool, as well as examples of index application.