Organisational Assessment Guidance

The organisational assessment is a tool to help you consider the different areas of your organisation, identify strengths, and identify areas to develop.

The tool is split into 12 related sections or ‘themes’. It’s likely that all of the themes will be relevant to most organisations, although some areas may be more important to your organisation than others. Each of the sections in this form is related to another in some way.

The 12 sections are:

Organisational Planning and Management
Governance
Human Resources and Staff Management
Leadership
Internal Communications
Fundraising
Finance Management
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
Project Planning and Management
Constituency
External Communications
Partnerships and Networks

More information about what each of these sections represents can be found under the ‘Themes’ page.

Before you begin:

1. Decide which sections to complete

If you are interested in doing a full organisational assessment it may be most useful to answer all of the questions in all 12 areas.

If you have already identified an area to develop, it may be better for you to focus on one or two areas.

If you choose to focus on one area, it is important to remember that developing one area of your organisation will always have an effect on another area.

For example, if you develop your fundraising function, you may find that the finance function is unable to keep up with the new income, and that the human resource structures are not able to deliver the new work that has been agreed. You may therefore want to consider also completing other sections that are closely related to your chosen section.

2. Who to involve

We recommend that you discuss the questions with the relevant stakeholders – the people involved in each section of work. This is because different people may have different perspectives on the same issue or question, and hearing their views will help you find the best solutions for your organisation.

For example, if you would like to review the finance function, it may be useful to include the Director, the Finance Manager, an administrator who supports finance, and also a budget-holder and a fundraiser.

3. How to answer the questions

Often it is better to discuss each question as a group before answering. This allows everyone to hear each other’s perspective and contribute their own ideas. Alternatively, each person could fill out an assessment on their own, and then discuss the results together as a group.

The important part is to make sure that the people who will be affected by any changes are able to participate.

When you have agreed on your answer, tick the box that most closely matches it on the form.