In 2018, the Organizational Effectiveness (OE) team at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation funded 10 organizations to explore ways to listen to or meaningfully engage the people and communities their work impacts and identify promising practices for how advocacy organizations can better listen to those at the heart of their work. ORS Impact worked to document learnings from these grants, including what it looks like and what it takes for advocacy organizations to meaningfully connect with the people their work impacts.

The Gates Foundation engaged ORS Impact (ORS) to develop a culturally relevant, methodologically rigorous tool to learn more about successful capacity building. The ORS team’s approach brought constituent needs and voice to the forefront throughout the process of tool development as well as its implementation. This brief shares the Gates Foundation’s tool, which can help advocates and foundations understand what constitutes strong advocacy and communications as well as opportunities to build capacity. The tool can also help organizations and foundations understand how advocacy and communications capacity is changing over time.