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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Briefs / Reports
2020

This brief aims to help funders, evaluators, and other social change agents be crisper and more accurate in how they talk about and understand approaches to advancing large-scale social change. In response to the increasing use of the term movement to describe a wide variety of efforts, we compare and contrast three distinct social change approaches that are often conflated with movements: field building, network development, and promoting the uptake of practices by large numbers of organizations.

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Briefs / Reports
2020

In this companion piece to “Not Always Movements: Multiple Strategies to Advance Large-Scale Social Change”, we dive a little deeper into promoting uptake of practices among large numbers of organizations. We outline some key theories and frameworks that underlie this approach, outcomes to look for, considerations regarding equity, and guidance on measurement and learning along the way. It is intended as a bite-sized introduction to key concepts around promoting the uptake of practice, to support further exploration and engagement.

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Tools
2019

This worksheet from "When the Best Offense is a Good Defense" helps advocates take periodic stock of short-term policy goals and document progress, including when progress means maintaining a past win or defending against an unanticipated threat. Use this tool at two points in time: 1) when identifying policy-related goals in specific areas for an upcoming legislative session, and 2) when later reflecting and documenting progress on these policy goals, as well as additional, unplanned positive changes and disadvantageous policies that were avoided. This tool is meant to be modified to fit different contexts and serve as a starting point for discussing variations of advocacy work.  

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Briefs / Reports
2019

A dedicated policy advocacy function is uncommon among foundations—many engage in policy solely through grantmaking. Colorado Health Foundation (CHF) worked with ORS Impact to describe the evolution of its policy advocacy function and explore the question: What does it take for a foundation to successfully integrate program-focused philanthropy and policy functions to advance its mission? Three polarities surfaced in CHS’s internal policy-focused efforts. This brief explores their manifestation over time, and the signals by which staff recognized and were able to manage polarities to enhance impact.

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