Step 3: Setting your tax goals, objectives and indicators

Once you’ve identified your problems and solutions and analysed the targets, stakeholders and policy, and political context and opportunities, it’s time to build this into a wider advocacy strategy. The next step is usually to develop your goals and objectives and to set indicators for measuring your progress.

Developing a goal

The goal is the overall purpose of the project, the big picture, the vision of what you are ultimately trying to achieve (for example ‘To ensure that the government raises sufficient revenues through taxation in order to deliver essential services to all citizens, including the poorest and most vulnerable’). It is long term and gives direction, helping you and your network or coalition know where you are going, generally over several years – but you will need to devise the advocacy strategy, or road map, to show you how to get there. Your advocacy project will contribute to its fulfilment but will not necessarily achieve it in isolation. Your goal should also reflect the mission and vision of your organisation or network.

The goal refers to the benefit that will be felt by those affected by an issue, whereas objectives often refer to the desired changes in policy and practices that will contribute to the goal.

Clarifying what you want to achieve with your advocacy – establishing ‘SMART’ objectives

An objective is the specific change you want to see and the change that will advance progress towards the ultimate goal. Good objectives can make all the difference to the success or failure of your advocacy efforts.

In Ghana, where the goal is ‘increased tax revenue for development and poverty reduction by ensuring an equitable, gender-sensitive, just and transparent tax system’, Christian Aid and its partners have identified four objectives towards meeting this goal:

• ‘An improved tax regime that favours the growth of the informal sector’
• ‘An improved tax incentive framework that obliges companies to adhere to tax payment’
• ‘Increased effectiveness of mechanisms to monitor transfer pricing’
• ‘Improved accountability and transparency in relation to oil revenues’.

Objectives can be long term or short term, and phased accordingly – the former can give you encouragement early on. Long-term objectives usually focus on changing the policy or practice of institutions, whereas shorter-term objectives can focus on attitude changes, raising awareness, getting an issue on the agenda, building a constituency of support or movement for change, and so on. It may be necessary to achieve some of the short-term objectives before you can achieve the longer-term ones.¹¹
For example, if the goal of Nigerian CSOs working on tax justice is improved accountability and transparency on oil revenues, then their long-term objective could be that the Nigerian government researches, documents and shares information on oil revenue from taxes annually by 2013. This may require a greater constituency of support among the Nigerian population or specific interest groups in order to be achievable – so achieving that support becomes a short- to medium-term objective. It may even require legislation, a Mining Act for example, so that could also become a medium-term objective.

It can be a good idea to develop solution-based objectives. NGOs are often criticised for campaigning against a policy or practice without providing possible alternatives. Being the source of credible, realistic solutions will lend weight to your advocacy. It is also the case that people tend to respond better to campaigns that offer a way forward rather than a more negative ‘just say no’ approach. To use the above example about Nigerian oil revenues, proposing a Mining Act would be a solution-based objective.

An idea for developing good objectives is to make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound). SMART objectives are only one set of criteria you can use to measure the results of your work. Not every organisation will want to subject its work to this particular project management tool. However, setting some objectives and using criteria to measure them is generally a good idea – this way you can measure and monitor progress, celebrate your successes and justify your activities.You will need to ask yourselves what is achievable or realistic in your context – it’s a judgement call. And objectives may, of course, change over time depending on progress.

The table below shows some examples of SMART tax advocacy objectives. The left-hand column shows the SMART objective and the right-hand column explains how the achievement of this objective relates to the problem.

Try creating some of your own (see Exercise 5 in the interaction pages).

For each objective, try to identify the targets – that is, the decision-making institutions or bodies that are able to effect the policy changes or implementation sought.

Developing your indicators – planning now for ‘monitoring and evaluating’ later

Having established your goals and objectives, it’s important to develop signposts or indicators that will ‘indicate’ whether or not you are on the path to fulfilling your objectives.

Monitoring and evaluation should be central to your advocacy strategy from the start; it should be something that takes place alongside research, planning and execution of your strategy; and it should influence the direction of your advocacy in the future. In order to measure whether you have made any progress or not, you will need to think in advance about what that ‘progress’ will look like. What evidence will prove or demonstrate that progress has been made and that the advocacy work undertaken had some kind of impact? The proof or evidence of success will be your indicators.

Examples of indicators