Our Knowledge, Resources & Publications

We are always learning through our work, and we seek to accelerate change more broadly by sharing our frameworks, approaches, and lessons learned.

Feature BRIEF

When the Best Offense is a Good Defense


2019

We talked to advocates and funders to better understand how they think about advocacy on the defense. We wanted to understand whether it was a distinct category of work and the degree to which there were useful frameworks and tools for evaluating it.

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How-Tos
2022

Process tracing is a causal methodology that can help people understand how a particular large-scale change actually happened within a complex dynamic environment. Much of the existing literature provides important information about the method; we wrote this brief to help more people operationalize the concepts and learn about practical steps for using this method more easily, with quality, and toward a more equitable world.

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Briefs / Reports
2021

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.

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Tools
2021

On September 15th, 2021, ORS Impact hosted a webinar to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges that animate narrative change measurement. With Neha Singh Gohil, Communications Officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, we explored different facets of narratives by identifying relevant and meaningful outcomes, responding to dynamic contexts and learning as you go, and what this might mean for funders and others engaged in this type of work.

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Briefs / Reports
2021

Better understanding and measuring progress is an important part of strengthening narrative change strategies. This brief offers insights into some of the questions facing practitioners, funders, and others interested in measuring this kind of work: How do you lay the foundations for successful measurement? What short- and longer-term signals can you look for to indicate that things are moving in the right direction? And how can you understand the impact of narrative change efforts when they’re happening in complex, dynamic environments?

Watch our webinar on measuring narrative change

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