Section 05: Assessing organisations' capacity
There are literally hundreds of Organisation Assessment (OA) tools available. Organisations also spend hours developing new ‘standard’ tools to diagnose areas of strengths and weaknesses in an organisation often through a scoring process, sometimes by assessing against descriptive ‘levels’. This diagnosis serves as both a baseline for tracking progress and a starting point for making a capacity strengthening plan.
The purpose of this section is to give some suggestions for how you can make this assessment process more meaningful and use it as an opportunity for empowerment and reflection with your partners, rather than just a mechanical and superficial exercise for some purpose dictated by a distant head office.
5.1: Getting started: how to bring up capacity strengthening?
Partners are often all too aware of the areas they need to improve in their project management and M&E. But it is not often that they have time and space to think about the wider organisational capacities which need to be developed: the functioning of their board, the development of future leaders, the systems and structures needed for ‘back room’ operations, and the mechanisms for community involvement for example.
A helpful role you can play:
Talk through with partners some of the models in Section 4, so they can see the need to look at the wider context for OA and capacity strengthening beyond just their capacity to deliver projects.
Here are some opportunities for discussions about broader organisational capacity:
Problems with a project which are not to do with how the project is being run, but are caused by organisational issues such as poor planning or unclear aims or unsustainable funding models
A strategic planning exercise when broader issues such as reviewing the mission, and the effectiveness of the organizationbecome important
A major external event (such as Covid or new technology) triggers a review of the organization’s work in the new context
A sense of stagnation where staff are feeling the need for more flexibility in the organization so they can innovate
A desire by the organization to be less dependent on international donors (or a donor pulling out of a partnership).
You may feel it is not your role to bring up issues such as governance. You need a strong relationship of trust and respect to be able to have these discussions. See Section 9 for more about the skills and qualities you can bring.
Involving partners in the process
Ideally, partners will take the lead for the capacity assessment. In many cases though, they may look to you to support them. Some key questions to discuss with your partner before you start:
Why are they doing an OA now? Where does it fit in with other plans for change in the organisation?
Have they done an OA recently with another donor or partner? If so could you build on this rather than doing it again?
In what way do they want you to be involved? How can you help facilitate without taking over the process?
Who else could support them (local independent facilitators, for example)?
What decisions and choices will they be in charge of? (choosing/adapting the OA tool, finding a consultant, deciding who to involve in the assessment, drawing up an action plan, deciding on capacity strengthening activities, controlling the budget etc.)
As we discussed in Section 3.1, ownership of the process by the partner is the single most important factor in successful and authentic capacity strengthening.
5.3: Tailoring the process
More important than the tool is HOW YOU USE IT. There are many different ways to go about an organisational assessment.
Here you can find a sample organisational assessment process to use with your partners
INGO Experience of trying out a new OA process with a local partner:
Our normal organisational assessment process is called a ‘self-assessment’ but actually involves our staff facilitating our tool with the partner’s staff. We lead each question, we ask follow-up questions, the Director speaks a lot and maybe one or two other staff. Sometimes we are not there, and one person from the partner organisation fills it in on their own and sends it back to us.
This time we decided to try to make the process much more participatory. They chose a tool they were familiar with, invited most of the staff to attend, and we sat at the back of the room and hardly spoke.
During the day, we just listened and saw how engaged all the staff were as discussions erupted spontaneously, and the Director held back to let staff have their say before she added her views. They were in charge of their own process and that came out in the quality of the discussion. Although they didn’t finish by the end of the day, we didn’t rush them along. They took the time they needed. We learnt that we can do things differently! It’s not about us, but about the partners! Our procedures are not as rigid as we thought. These are deep waters we are swimming into, but we will learn as we go along.
(Former INTRAC course participant, Feb 2022)
5.4: Components of assessment tools
As with any tool, it is much more effective if those involved in the assessment process can combine different approaches and sources of information rather than just rely on one OA tool (see Section 5.5).
5.4.1: Scoring vs descriptive levels:
A description is much clearer than just ‘level 1-5’. It helps people to think more clearly about what each level involves and also gives a clear idea for what to develop if they are on level 1 and want to get to level 3, for example.
HIV/AIDS alliance assessment tool for Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) is an example of tool with descriptions of each level.
5.4.2 Built-in process for using the tool
Some OA tools include the description or suggestions for a process for how to use the tool, who to involve, how to facilitate the scoring etc. This can be in separate scoring tool and process description, or built into the OA tool itself. Process descriptions range from very detailed (e.g. the tools developed by WWFor HIV/AIDS alliance) to quite simple (e.g. ActionAid Myanmar).
Guide to the WWF Organizational Assessment Tool
5.4.3 Built-in planning for capacity strengthening
Always follow an OA by coming up with a plan for capacity strengthening. Having a planning process built into the tool can make this easier for organisations who don’t have support to carry out the OA.
5.4.4 Reflecting values and approaches in the tool
Make sure the tool reflects capacities you think are important to the values you want to put into practice, or relevant to the kind of organisation. E.g. a community based organisation would want to include questions on community participation in project decision-making and design.
5.5: Adapting assessment tools
When using organisational assessment tools, beware of the risks of using these tools mechanically, for instance not triangulating with other sources, not linking elements to each other, remaining blind to the specific context, etc. Also, remember that the organisational assessment should not be a one-off activity, but rather the beginning of a change process.
Some of these issues can be alleviated by working with a small group of people from your partner to adapt a generic tool to their needs. This has two advantages:
The partner gets to really understand and engage with the tool before starting to do any scoring.
The tool will include capacities which are relevant to them, and they can also get rid of capacities that are not relevant.
However, adapting an existing tool also has some disadvantages, in particular:
It will take more time
It means you can’t use it to compare between organisations (e.g. if you have a group of youth organisations all having capacity strengthening support from your organisation).
Remember not to use assessment tools mechanically. Adapting the tool(s) may be a good idea.
5.6: Broader and deeper assessment
As with any tool, it is much more effective if you can combine different approaches and sources of information rather than just rely on one organisational assessment tool. Don’t be satisfied with just what’s visible on the surface: culture, leadership style and taboos can’t be explored with a tool.
Some approaches to do this include the following:
Semi-structured interviews with individuals in different positions in the organisation to get different viewpoints (board member, volunteer, staff, manager etc)
Observation of dynamics in meetings (who speaks, who remains silent, how are decisions taken)
Observation of office set up (do people eat together, are the notice boards updated, any differences between managers’ offices and everyone else’s)
Observation of interactions with beneficiaries / community
Look at documents such as plans, reports, the website.
INTRAC's M&E Universe has guidance on different data collection methods, including interviews and observation
See also Section 4.2.
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