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10. 18 Coffee Break Conversation: Concepts, Design Strategies, and Methods for Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change Initiatives

Presenter:
Annette L Gardner, PhD, MPH, Principal, ALGardner Consulting

Jared Raynor, MS, Director, Evaluation & Learning, TCC Group

Speaker Bios:

Dr. Annette L Gardner, PhD, MPH, formerly an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She has considerable evaluation expertise and has designed, directed and served as an advisor on national, state and local evaluations focusing on expanding access to care, insurance coverage expansions, the adoption of health information technology, and expanded advocacy capacity. She was the Director of the 8-year evaluation of The California Endowment's Clinic Consortia Policy and Advocacy Program that paved the way for advocacy and policy change evaluation more broadly. A political scientist with academic interests in federalism, community empowerment and health care reform, she is a thought leader on advocacy and policy change evaluation. Dr. Gardner has aggressively championed for deepening evaluator understanding of policymaking and advocacy. She has been a frequent presenter at the American Evaluation Association Annual Meeting (since 2003) and served as a Co-Program Chair and Co-Chair of the Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation TIG. In 2017, she and Claire Brindis, DrPH recently co-authored the definitive book, Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation: Theory and Practice (Stanford University Press).


Jared Raynor, Director, Evaluation & Learning, brings a natural and no-nonsense approach to evaluation, capacity building, performance management, and organizational development, seamlessly guiding clients through complex issues in a diverse array of sectors and content areas. Equally at ease with members of congress, youth advocates, foundation program officers, and nonprofit executive directors, he is motivated to ensure diverse voices are heard, understood, and lifted up in a way that guides decision-making at multiple levels.


Description: 
Several factors have fueled the need for skilled evaluators that can design appropriate advocacy and policy change (APC) evaluations: increased foundation interest in supporting APC initiatives to achieve transformational, systems-level change; evaluation of democracy-building initiatives worldwide; and diffusion of advocacy beyond the traditional advocacy community. And evaluators have met these needs with great success, building a new field of evaluation practice, adapting and creating evaluation concepts and methods, and shaping advocate, funder and evaluator thinking on advocacy and policy change in all its diverse manifestations. During this Coffee Break, Annette Gardner and Jared Raynor, long-time APC evaluators, will provide a taste of their advocacy and policy change evaluation workshop which is intended to expand evaluator capacity to design tailored advocacy and policy change evaluations, as well as help them navigate a turbulent and changing advocacy arena. They will describe their approach to bringing together curated concepts and unique measures, the designs and insights from real-life initiatives, and data on nonprofit advocate evaluation capacity. Come and increase your advocacy evaluation knowledge!

Date:
Tuesday, October 18th, 3:00 - 3:25 PM EDT