Consulting Services

APEP’s consulting services are tailored to each client, but success for us often means leaving our clients with a stronger strategy, clearer thinking, and a deeper understanding of their impact. Our projects vary widely, including domestic and international issues, and advocacy and non-advocacy objectives. And our clients come to us at many different stages of the planning and evaluation process – from the initial stages of theory of change development to the final evaluation of project impact.

Themes in Our Work

  • Media and Communications Initiatives

    Nonprofit organizations and governments invest millions every year in cause-oriented documentary and feature films, radio and television programming, digital and social media, and other forms of communications. APEP works with clients to clarify and measure how these initiatives influence the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of target audiences—and thus contribute to social change. Although our methodological tools vary across projects, our objectives are the same: to understand how our clients seek to make a difference through media and communications; to measure the reach and impact of their messages; and to help translate findings into strategic next steps.

  • Policy Advocacy

    It's no news that advocating for policy change is difficult. Policy change processes are complex, unpredictable, and often painstakingly slow. But advocates, their boards, and their funders all want to know whether or not their efforts contribute to meaningful change. We work with clients to clarify their strategy and appropriate benchmarks of progress, and collect data that helps advocates know whether – and how – they are making a difference. We draw on multiple tools and techniques, including the Advocacy Progress Planner, champion tracking, bellwether and stakeholder interviews, content analysis, and more.

    • Theory of Change and M&E Frameworks

      What are your goals and objectives? How do your program’s activities lead to your desired outcomes? How would you define “success”? What are appropriate indicators that will help you track progress toward success? These are common questions that we help our clients sort out. In fact, one of the first steps in many of our evaluation projects is helping make more explicit the underlying theory about how a program’s activities lead to desired changes or outcomes in the world. Our experience includes helping clients clarify their “theory of change,” identifying meaningful measures and appropriate data sources for tracking progress and impact, and supporting the development of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools and frameworks that clients can continue to use in the future.

    • Coalitions and Networks

      Multi-stakeholder partnerships – coalitions, alliances, networks, and others – can bring together combinations of skills and constituencies that can be more than the sum of their parts. Their collective power can help transform social norms, practices, and policy. But these arrangements bring their own evaluation challenges. Funders and advocates have sought APEP's consulting services at various stages in the partnership process: developing a strategy for creating, funding, and managing a coalition; assessing the effectiveness of a partnership's structure and internal functions; developing shared indicators to assess progress and impact; and evaluating the impact of a partnership’s collective advocacy efforts.

      Clients

      • Foundations and Philanthropic Advisors

        Arabella Advisors
        Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
        The California Endowment
        California Health Care Foundation
        Charities Aid Foundation
        The Connect U.S. Fund
        David and Lucile Packard Foundation
        The Ford Foundation
        Fund for Shared Insight
        Humanity United
        The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
        LFA-Learning for Action
        Pew Charitable Trusts
        The Russell Berrie Foundation
        Tides Foundation
        United Nations Foundation
        Wallace Global Fund
        The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

      • Nonprofits and Coalitions

        2025 Network for Black Men and Boys
        Americans for Informed Democracy
        American Jewish World Service
        Aspen Energy and Environment Program
        Aspen Global Health and Development
        Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program
        Aspen Youth and Engagement Division
        CARE USA
        Crisis Action
        The Expectations Project
        Girls Not Brides
        International Women’s Health Coalition
        International Housing Coalition
        Island Press
        ITVS: Independent Television Service
        Research!America
        Wilson Center
        World Learning

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