|
 Issue 5 • December/January 2006
 Dear Philanthropy Professional,
Welcome to a special holiday edition of IdeaMail. All of us at Putnam Community Investment Consulting wish you and yours a joyous holiday season. May the New Year bring peace, happiness, and prosperity to all.
In this edition we want to share with you a new leadership award program as well as tips and resources on evaluating policy advocacy efforts. We also want to thank our clients and associates who partnered with us in 2005!
Happy Holidays,
Kris Putnam-Walkerly, MSW
President
Yes, you can support and evaluate policy advocacy!
We recently attended a workshop on policy advocacy evaluation and wanted to share several new resources you may find extremely helpful in supporting and evaluating policy advocacy efforts.
What is policy advocacy?
Policy advocacy is any effort to influence public policy. This encompasses a broad range of activities, from researching, organizing, and building communications strategies to lobbying, networking, and educating voters (Alliance for Justice, 2005)
Is it OK to support policy advocacy? Isn’t that lobbying?
Many foundations are interested in supporting policy advocacy, but have questions:
- Can a foundation fund a charity that lobbies?
- Can foundation staff talk to legislators about specific policy issues?
- How can a foundation promote advocacy?
- What advocacy activities can a foundation participate in directly?
An excellent report to answer those questions is Investing in Change: A Funder’s Guide to Supporting Advocacy, by the Alliance for Justice.
How do you know if policy advocacy is effective?
Two new resources can help you evaluate the success of policy advocacy efforts.
The Challenge of Assessing Advocacy: Strategies for a Prospective Approach to Evaluating Policy Change and Advocacy (October 2005)
provides an overview of the challenges of evaluating policy change, establishes guiding principles for policy change evaluation and makes recommendations for a prospective approach to conducting an evaluation. This report was written by Blueprint Research and Design, Inc. for The California Endowment.
Advocacy Capacity Assessment Tool and Advocacy Evaluation Tool by the Alliance for Justice (2005) helps you determine an organization’s capacity to conduct advocacy, strengthen their advocacy capacity, and identify and describe achievements. While we have not used them, both tools look easy to use and very helpful.
Nominate a leader for The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards Program
The James Irvine Foundation launched a new awards program to recognize individual leaders who are making a demonstrable difference to California’s future. These leaders may be working within any sector – nonprofit, public, or private – and within any field, such as education, health, the arts, housing, economic development, or the environment. Award recipients will each receive $125,000 of flexible support for their work to benefit the people of California.
If you know an innovative leader who is addressing an important issue for California’s future, and whose leadership is inclusive, constructive, and effective please nominate him or her. Nominations are due by January 20, 2006
Putnam Community Investment Consulting is honored to have helped The James Irvine Foundation develop this awards program by conducting a scan of leadership awards programs and recommending program design ideas.
Thank you to our clients and associates!
We had the pleasure of partnering with the following organizations throughout the year. Thanks to all of you for choosing Putnam Community Investment Consulting. We look forward to continued success in 2006!
Blue Shield of California Foundation
California Health Care Foundation
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos
Stuart Foundation
The Health Trust
The James Irvine Foundation
We could not have successfully met our clients’ needs without our talented team of professionals:
Andrea Pradia, Consultant
Arnold Chandler, Consultant
Caroline Krauskopf, Senior Advisor
David Pontecorvo, Consultant
Diane Schweitzer, Senior Advisor
Jesse King, Consultant
Kelly Poelker, Administrative Coordinator
Morries Merchant, Technology Advisor
Nina Bohlen, Consultant
Susan Kleinman, Consultant
Susan Sharpe, Writer
Suzanne Mollenkopf, Bookkeeper
Traverso Santana Design, Graphic and Web Designer
|
