The Advocacy Index
Funded by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), the Lebanon Civic Support Initiative (LCSI) aims to build the capacity of civil society organizations to advocate for local or national issues. In order to assess areas of organizational need and evaluate a grantee’s capacity-building progress, LCSI collaborated with Lebanese advocacy organizations to develop and refine an Advocacy Index. This Index covers five key competency areas deemed necessary to the implementation of an effective advocacy initiative.
Through a consultative process, each LCSI grantee was assigned a score between zero and six in each of these competency areas based on actual experience. The average of the five scores represents the grantee’s organizational Advocacy Index. This evaluation process took place in two phases, at the start and end of the grant period. The Advocacy Index tool allows OTI and the grantees to identify internal areas in nee d of support and to quantify and aggregate changes in the capacity of grantees to advocate.