Thought Partners for
Social Innovators

The ORS Impact team has earned a global reputation for leadership, insight and innovation. We work collaboratively with our clients, bringing our distinctive expertise in planning, measurement and evaluation to their most vexing challenges.

Measuring Political Will Pathways for Change: 10 Theories to Inform Advocacy and Policy Change Efforts

Sara Afflerback , MA (she/her)

Director

Sara believes measurement and evaluation is most powerful when it inspires organizational learning. She works with clients to design a Measurement, Learning, and Evaluation (MLE) practice that generates data and insights to support their work. Sara co-designed ORS Impact’s annual MLE Lab, a cohort experience for foundation and nonprofit staff to strengthen their MLE practice. Through the Lab, she coaches participating organizations through the development of theories of change and measurement plans, and around building an organizational culture of reflection and learning.

To promote learning, Sara believes that evaluation data and findings should be presented in a way that tell a story. She helped establish ORS Impact’s data visualization practice to maximize the utility of our evaluation products. Sara first determines which type of product will best suit the audience and purpose of a deliverable, and then applies principles of design and communication so that readers are more likely to digest and use the information.

Sara joined ORS Impact in 2012. She holds a Master’s in Applied Sociology from the University of Central Florida (UCF). At UCF, she taught and evaluated undergraduate courses including Social Power and Inequality and Sex and Gender in Society, and published journal articles on the transition to motherhood.

Sara is happiest when she’s in nature, in the company of dogs, cooking, or running to political podcasts.

Sample Projects:

  • Facilitated a Community of Practice for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Pacific Northwest initiative of five housing authority and school district partnerships
  • Set up MLE systems for the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy and Higher Education Centers
  • Evaluation partner for Democracy Fund Public Square’s Investigative Journalism portfolio
  • MLE partner for the #GivingTuesday initiative at 92Y’s Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact

Publications:

  • Measuring Political Will: Lessons from Modifying the Policymaker Ratings Method
  • Contributed to: Pathways for Change: 10 Theories to Inform Advocacy and Policy Change Efforts