Evaluating. Once your advocacy effort is completed, it is time to take stock of the results you achieved, and the costs that you paid to achieve those results. It is rare when you achieve everything you started out wanting. Other participants in the policy process will want their views adopted, and your persuasion efforts may not have been fully effective. It becomes vital to judge exactly what you achieved compared to what you planned to accom- plish—is it close to three-fourths of what you wanted? More like half? Even less than half? This is an important part of your evaluation but not the entire evaluation.
You also need to compare what you did with what you planned to do—were you (or your group) able to meet as often as you desired with key decision makers? Were you able to round up the number of volunteers needed to make calls or write letters? If the answers are no, you’ll want to examine the reasons why you weren’t able to do so. If the answers are yes, you’ll want to document what you did so that you’ll also be able to do it again in the next advocacy effort.