Organizational Assessment

A FRAMEWORK FOR IMPROVING PERFORMANCE AND BUILDING CAPACITY

Non-Profit organizations play a vital role in the health of our country. They provide critical services that contribute to the economy. They strengthen our community and make people whole again. For those in this industry, whether staff, board or volunteer, they focus their lives and work on making a difference. Having a deep understanding of your organizations’ current status and its capacity to grow and sustain its services will have a profound impact on your organizations future.

1. Do you have a clear picture of your organization’s operational, management, adaptive and leadership capacity?

2. Is your vision translated into clear, bold goals with specific time frames and concrete measures that are universally known?

3. How effective is your organizations’ leadership and level of commitment, engagement and satisfaction of staff, board and volunteers?

4. How is your budget process integrated into all operations, reflecting organizational needs and objectives?

An Appreciative Approach to Building Capacity and Sustaining Results:

1. Informal interviews with staff and board to capture information and stories of what you appreciate and value about the best of what is and their vision of what might be.

2. Formal, in-depth survey designed by the Mckinsey Institute to rate your organization’s maturity of Aspirations, Strategy, Organizational skills, Human Resources, Systems and Infrastructure, Organizational Structure and Culture.

3. Feedback survey results, prioritized areas of improvement.

4. Design and execute goals and initiatives to build strengths and impact growth and sustainability.

A Client Story – Revitalizing a Community Treasure

I have been assessing non-profit organizations for a very long time and have found that there are basic strategies, knowledge and understanding an organization needs to get to the next level of inspired growth/maturity.  And, likewise, there are basic issues always at play when longer established organizations have not reached their potential, are declining and/or lost their focus.

The following organization, a major education/cultural center for children, fits into this second category of losing its ground to the point of potential shut down.

This 25 year old institution, stood at an important juncture in its history. Although it had been recognized as an industry leader in the past, it had begun to struggle with leadership and financial issues for the past 8 years.  And, the organization was in the midst of planning a new, much larger secondary site, while the current site was in a serious state of decline.  

With an organization operating for 25 years and planning an expansion, one would expect to find a moderate level of capacity in place at the very least. However the Leadership, Adaptive, Management and Operational capacities were showing up at a basic level down to a clear need of improvement in the in-depth assessment. 

The organization had been locked into an 8 year cycle of changing leadership and vision, which led to misalignment between leadership, staff and community. Capital investors had all but abandoned the current aging facility due to the development of an expanded site.

In addition to a cycle of high staff turnover, a line of credit that could not be funded based on a significant reduction in revenue streams, the formal assessment clearly outlined that the infrastructure could not respond to external opportunities and threats, a clear lack of organizational/operational skills and seriously divided Board, Staff and Community.

The needs of the organization and its importance to the Community became very clear to the Board and Staff.  Their commitment and dedication quickly supported the need for significant change in the current beloved facility, abandoning the new development, regaining its reputation and setting a plan of Revitalization, Innovation and Funding.

Steps included:

·    an extensive customer/market research to clearly understand the organizations position within its current and new market segments; 

·    creating an infrastructure that could support and sustain the new plan;

·    acquiring investors to renovate the facility with innovative programs and partnerships; 

·    developing new and improved revenue streams; 

·    bringing back sustainable funding for community sources; and

·    gaining the respect and collaboration with influential and powerful stakeholders within its industry.

The results:

First Year:

• 22% decrease in administrative costs

• 69% increase in capital investments

• Fully renovated facility

Second Year:

• 100% increase in client base

• 150% increase in revenues

• Debt retirement

Third Year:

• 50% growth in client base

• 60% growth in revenues