With advocacy, both on and offline, it can be so hard to focus your efforts and figure out where you can have the most impact. Designed by NGOs for NGOs, the ‘Assess Your Advocacy’ online tool was developed by the Advocacy Initiative, and is now being distributed by Barnardos as a legacy partner. It contains a detailed survey for community and voluntary sector organisations who want to interrogate their lobbying and advocacy work, identifying their strengths and weaknesses.
This self-assessment tool allows organisations to evaluate their advocacy capacity and, crucially, identify ways in which that capacity could be strengthened. It is flexible enough to be used by the smallest and largest NGOs and also by colleagues within the same organisation to initiate internal evaluation discussions.
It’s a really useful tool that will help you self-critique and direct your work more effectively.