The Aspen Institute

This document is a comprehensive guide to the Advocacy Capacity Review (ACR), a facilitated process to help local civil society organizations identify their family planning and reproductive health (FPRH) advocacy strengths and challenges, and identify priorities for building more robust practices. The process uses a facilitated discussion and a survey tool covering four categories of organizational advocacy capacity. The components of the ACR survey focus on specific organizational capacities to support and conduct advocacy. These include a discrete set of related organizational effectiveness capacities as well as advocacy strategies and tactics. The ACR also encourages CSOs to identify additional capacities that their organizations need to effectively use advocacy as a core strategy. The ACR is designed for use with individual organizations or with coalitions organized for the purpose of advancing FPRH advocacy. It was developed by Rhonda Schlangen and the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Planning and Evaluation Program (APEP) to provide a critical set of data for the evaluation of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation International Reproductive Health strategy to support local advocacy in Sub-Saharan Africa.