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Global Interdependence Initiative
CONTINUOUS PROGRESS Better Advocacy Through Evaluation
 

What We Do

Continuous Progress Strategic Services (CPSS) is a consulting practice located within the Aspen Institute’s Global Interdependence Initiative (GII). CPSS helps our clients plan and evaluate their efforts to develop and encourage better US policy.

In the past year, CPSS has been hired by major foundations and nonprofit organizations, including the Connect US funding collaborative (comprised of the Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Open Society Institute), Humanity United, World Learning, Americans for Informed Democracy, and The California Endowment.

CPSS works mostly with groups that are trying to change US foreign policy, but clients and prospective clients have asked us to apply our thinking and practice to policy change on domestic issues including rural community development and high school reform. We help our clients:

  • Plan: make realistic predictions about what they can accomplish and lay out an efficient strategy to achieve their objectives;
  • Communicate: Think systematically about how to get the right message to the right audience;
  • Convene: bring the right people together;
  • Evaluate: identify and record information that helps them assess progress towards their goals; and
  • Learn: Apply lessons learned from early experiences to make improvements along the way.

Our services build on the GII’s seven-year record of producing path-breaking tools and training for better policy advocacy. Our most recent tools:

  • Continuous Progress: Web-based guides to planning and evaluating foreign policy advocacy efforts draw on three years of consultations with foundations, advocates, strategic communications specialists, and evaluators.
  • The Advocacy Progress Planner: A simple web-based advocacy planning guide. With the help of lively design, jargon-free definitions, and deceptively simple questions, even novice advocates and advocacy grantmakers can use the APP to create a thoughtful plan, and identify the benchmarks that will help measure progress.
  • The Switchblog: This lively and eclectic conversation "where global issues, messaging and advocacy meet" offers fresh perspectives on the challenge of promoting smarter policy, and smarter policy advocacy.

Featured Project

The Advocacy Progress Planner: an online "logic model" for planning your advocacy effort

The Advocacy Progress Planner was designed to give you and your team an at-a-glance look at the ingredients of advocacy efforts. It can guide you to clarify the elements of your own campaign: goals and impacts; audience; what you bring to your campaign; the activities and tactics you're planning for; and benchmarks along the way to your goals. As you click on your choices in each area, you will see your campaign strategy come into focus. And you’ll get some clues about how to gauge your progress and make improvements.

As you and your colleagues ask and answer these tough questions, you can improve your model - and your advocacy. When you're ready, you can print out a PDF of the customized logic model with your notes, or click a link to get an individual URL you and your team can use to revisit the logic model. Visit the Advocacy Progress Planner now at planning.continuousprogress.org.