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At Continuous Progress Strategic Services, we're proud of our diverse range of clients and activities. Here are some of our current advocacy planning and evaluation projects:
- CARE - Learning Tours for Maternal Health: CPSS is helping CARE evaluate the impact on policy of a new effort to bring key Congressional decisionmakers overseas to learn about the challenge and promise of maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) programs. CPSS is also working to integrate this advocacy effort into CARE's larger MNCH advocacy plan.
- The California Endowment and Prevention Institute: With funding from The California Endowment, CPSS is working with the Oakland-based Prevention Institute on a strategic learning project aimed at helping the Institute advance the work of California’s Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments, the country’s premier anti-obesity alliance.
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): Advising on evaluation baseline and evaluation planning for CSIS's ambitious new Global Health Policy Center.
- Charities Aid Foundation: Working with the UK-based CAF, CPSS is participating in workshops to help inform and improve philanthropic practices in fast-growing economies like Brazil and Russia.
- Connect US/Tides Foundation: The Connect US funding collaborative hired CPSS to work with 23 of its grantees addressing five major foreign policy challenges during the 2007-8 Presidential campaign. It has renewed its contract with us for its 2008-9 policy change grantees and has invited a proposal for a third year of work. CPSS helped grantees use our Advocacy Progress Planner to refine their strategy and develop an evaluation plan for their projects. CPSS follows up over the course of the grants to help the project leaders assess and improve their strategies in consultation with the grantmakers at Connect US. Connect US is a foundation/NGO initiative led by a professional staff, supported by a donors' collaborative, with a grantmaking fund managed by the Tides Foundation. The current funders are: the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
- Humanity United - Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery: CPSS has offered strategic, tactical, and facilitation assistance to Humanity United and to members of the Action Group, promoting improvements in HU’s approach to advocacy coalition management and longer-term movement-building.
- International Women’s Health Coalition - With Women Worldwide: A Compact to End HIV/AIDS (WWW): IWHC asked CPSS to assess the global and country-level accomplishments, lessons, and shortcomings of IWHC’s WWW program initiative, in FY 2008 and 2009. This evaluation will help IWHC track and increase its contributions to generating HIV/AIDS policies, programs, and funding mechanisms at national, regional, and international levels that address women’s risk, invest in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and include women in decision-making.
- Research!America - Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research Ambassadors: Research!America engaged CPSS to assess its efforts to train global health researchers to become effective advocacy “ambassadors.” CPSS expects to help Research!America shape a more strategic approach to training and deploying the ambassadors. Our role also includes building internal capacity to carry out impact evaluation in the future.
- 3D Security Initiative: Assisted with design and convening of Balanced Security Outreach working group
- Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors: CPSS participated in a team working with Arabella to design a simple overview of policy advocacy results for a major global funder.
- Americans for Informed Democracy: This youth-led organization seeks to "build a new generation of globally conscious leaders who can shape an American foreign policy appropriate for our increasingly interdependent world." CPSS developed evaluation plans and benchmarks to help Americans for Informed Democracy and the JEHT Foundation assess the impact of student-generated videos on human rights themes under a project called "Rights, Camera, Action."
- Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors: Produced white paper (pdf) on evaluating the advocacy role of think tanks
- Aspen Institute Policy Programs: Facilitated effort to identify common objectives and strategies among several Institute programs addressing structural causes of poverty in the United States.
- The California Endowment: Developed the Advocacy Progress Planner, a flexible, easy to use, web-based tool for planning and evaluating advocacy efforts.
- Citizens for Global Solutions: Advised program staff and local community leaders on policy "asks" and messaging for proposed energy, climate change and development initiative.
- Community Strategies Group: Conducted and analyzed 25 interviews with citizen-leaders in Pickaway County, Ohio as part of a project to build county-wide consensus about its economic development strategy; presented Advocacy Progress Planner to community foundation leaders from Minnesota and Wisconsin.
- Realizing Rights: Analyzed content of coverage of immigrant rights issues, convened expert panel, drafted and revised talking points placing US debate in context of findings from International Commission on Global Migration.
- Save Darfur Campaign Divestment Initiative: Provided "first-cut" advice to divestment initiative on strategic plan, suggesting benchmarks for launch and early media campaign.
- Wallace Global Fund: The Fund has asked CPSS to help it explore how best to track and analyze the strategies and tactics of those who oppose broader reproductive rights and services in developing countries.
- World Learning: Offered strategic communications advice and convening assistance as World Learning explored how to highlight the value of international exchange and citizen diplomacy as a critical component of "smart power."