Author: Nick Thorne, Global Advocacy Monitoring Advisor, Sightsavers UK
Exploring contribution analysis as a way for an NGO to evaluate its progress towards policy and advocacy goals
Sightsavers reports on its piloting of contribution analysis to assess the extent of its role in enabling the revision of the electoral code in Senegal and the development of an eye health policy in Sierra Leone
Introduction
Sightsavers is a UK-based NGO, with projects across Africa and South Asia to eliminate preventable blindness and promote rights for people with disabilities. In recent years, we have been grappling with the challenge of how we can effectively capture the progress made towards policy influencing goals in evaluations. Policy and advocacy work is not easily quantified, project delivery often diverges from original plans due to the fluidity of political contexts, and conventional monitoring and evaluation approaches are not always well suited to policy and advocacy. So in 2023, we piloted contribution analysis as a new approach to the evaluation of our policy influencing work.
What is contribution analysis?
Contribution analysis is an approach to evaluating the significance of different stakeholders in delivering the successes of a programme intervention. Instead of starting with the original project plans, contribution analysis begins at the end of a project, looks at the key achievements, and the role that was played in reaching them. Evidence is collected from multiple stakeholders, to demonstrate the extent to which they played a role in delivering the result.
There are different approaches to contribution analysis according to the subject under evaluation. One approach is contribution ranking, in which information is collected to assess whether the contribution of a project was high, medium, or low; a second approach involves developing a theory as to how change was delivered and then gathering evidence to support the theory; and a third is contribution tracing, a more complex statistical approach. We based our methodology on the second approach.
How Sightsavers piloted contribution analysis
To pilot contribution analysis, we selected two examples of policy influencing achievements from the six-year €12.7 million programme funded by Irish Aid, which came to an end in 2022: the revision of the electoral code in Senegal to include provisions for persons with disabilities; and the development of an eye health policy in Sierra Leone. Sightsavers had advocated for these policy changes over many years, but as part of a diverse coalition of stakeholders, and we were interested in using contribution analysis to explore how the policy influencing process worked in each case.
In Senegal, eleven people were interviewed, including representatives from federation of organisations for persons with disabilities, the Directorate for Elections and the National Electoral Commission, civil society groups as well as Sightsavers regional and country office staff. In Sierra Leone, nine people were interviewed, including representatives from the Ministry of Health and National Eye Health Programme, current and former Sightsavers’ staff, as well as members of other partner international organisations.
How did the pilot go and what did the contribution analysis tell us?
Following the collection of data, we wrote up the findings to produce a narrative account of the role that each stakeholder had played in achieving the two instances of policy change, as well as an assessment of the experience of piloting contribution analysis. The full contribution analysis is available on the Sightsavers website.
The process shed light on advocacy achievements made during the programme which had not been identified in the externally conducted end-term evaluation. The development of the eye health policy in Sierra Leone was not among the original project objectives, as this had not been identified as a feasible goal back in 2016. As a result of this, the external evaluation, following the conventional approach of assessing the extent to which project objectives were met, did not cover the development of the eye health policy in depth, even though this was an important project achievement.
Beyond this, it provided useful insights into the role of Sightsavers in driving policy change. In both case studies, the testimonies of interviewees emphasised Sightsavers’ role in facilitating the input of organisations of persons with disabilities into government decision-making processes. While donor reporting typically focuses on the disbursement of funds and the delivery of outputs, contribution analysis generated useful learning in showing Sightsavers’ impact through working in partnership.
Contribution analysis demonstrated a number of advantages which make it more suited to the dynamics of policy and advocacy. The flexibility in the selection of achievements, and the taking into account of the contribution of other governmental and non-state actors to the result, produced more nuanced, interesting and useful learning.
The response from partners was very positive, and interviewees were keen to engage in the process. Delivering contribution analysis was labour-intensive, particularly in the data collection phase, and therefore it is not an approach which can easily be integrated into every project evaluation. However, the pilot demonstrated its value to the organisation, and we are now exploring how we can apply contribution analysis in other programmes in future.
Our thanks to Nick Thorne and Sightsavers UK for this guest blog and for contributing their perspective to the UK Evaluation Society’s work.
How to cite this article
Thorne, N (2026) Using contribution analysis to evaluate NGO policy and advocacy progress. UK Evaluation Society blog. Available at: https://evaluation.org.uk/ngo-contribution-analysis-to-evaluate-policy-and-advocacy-progress/ (Accessed: [insert date]).
Nick Thorne
Nick Thorne is a monitoring, evaluation and research specialist with over 10 years’ experience across health, education, governance and social inclusion programmes in the international development sector. He currently works as Global Advocacy and Monitoring Advisor at Sightsavers UK. Nick has lived and worked in French Guiana and Burkina Faso and is fluent in French and German.
