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The Advocacy and Policy Change issue of The Evaluation Exchange

Lots of civil society missions are difficult to evaluate, but probably none more so than activism. The Advocacy and Policy Change issue of The Evaluation Exchange (32 page PDF) explores this very topic with a delightful array of articles, including some that we have previously mentioned at Nonprofit Online News. The topics include: What's Different About Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change? Evaluations Based on Theories of the Policy Process. What does monitoring and evaluation look like for real-life advocates? Evaluating Advocates' Spheres of Influence With Domain Leaders. Posted: 2/11/08; 4:37:28 PM #

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design

There are hundreds of web design principles and tips out there online. I have even published a few myself. The recent 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design at Smashing Magazine stands out for several reasons: It's very relevant to the kinds of mistakes I see these days. It isn't afraid to contradict itself. It's very user centric. And it strongly advocates testing, something almost no nonprofit organizations bothers to do. Most of us could learn something from it. I know I could. Here are the principles in brief: (1) Don’t make users think. (2) Don’t squander users’ patience. (4) Strive for feature exposure. (5) Make use of effective writing. (6) Strive for simplicity. (7) Don’t be afraid of the white space. (8) Communicate effectively with a “visible language”. (9) Conventions are our friends. (10) Test early, test often. Posted: 2/11/08; 4:09:20 PM #

The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

I loved reading Steve Outing's 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism. He gets the nuances of openess and risk just right at each level and provides resources and examples as well. Though his piece is aimed at traditional news outlets, almost all of his analysis is of value to civil society organizations who are pursuing the power of networks: (1) The first step: Opening up to public comment. (2) Second step: The citizen add-on reporter. (3) Now we're getting serious: Open-source reporting. (4) The citizen bloghouse. (5) Newsroom citizen 'transparency' blogs. (6) The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version. (7) The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version. (8) Add a print edition. (9) The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism. (10) Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof. (11) Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors. Posted: 2/11/08; 3:55:14 PM #