In continuing our work to support Public Welfare Foundation’s exploration of criminal justice transformation advocacy coalitions, ORS Impact has conducted this literature scan to provide more context and targeted information about the conditions that enable coalition success. Through this process, we have identified 10 conditions that contribute to coalition success: shared vision and goals, coalition culture, resource availability, staff roles and leadership, governance structures, strategy and theory of change, diversity of membership, collaboration and partnership, community engagement, and power sharing.

In 2023, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation worked with ORS Impact to conduct an evaluation to understand progress during the 117th Congress on three federal policies: the Advance Premium Tax Credit (APTC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and closing the Medicaid coverage gap. This brief summarizes what we did and what we learned about: (1) collecting and analyzing data, (2) developing and testing hypotheses, and (3) reporting to conduct process tracing on the three policies. The primary audience for this brief is the evaluation field, particularly evaluators considering applying process tracing to a policy advocacy evaluation. Our hope is that sharing our approach and lessons learned can make it easier for others to implement this method with high quality for other advocacy and policy change evaluations.