Diagnose organisation maturity with IPN Assessments
Start your Capacity Building journey with a micro-diagnostic
In 2020 Saaras Foundation, a UP-based nonprofit, partnered with Atma for capacity building support in the context of fundraising and financial sustainability. The partnership began with an organisational assessment [1]:
“Atma administered the Life Stage Survey (LSS) [2] with Saaras. The LSS is a diagnostic tool that allows us to understand the organisation’s areas of strengths, what processes need to be developed, or the key areas where support is needed.
This exercise helped us define the priorities for our partnership and plan our interventions”
This is a typical pattern: a capacity building journey of any organisation begins with an assessment of its current strengths and gap areas. For a nonprofit in India, there currently are two main options to take such an assessment.
The first is to enrol into a longer capacity building programme, like the ones offered by Atma, Dhwani Foundation, or Jan Saahas (among others). These programmes start with a baseline assessment of the nonprofit, and then define specific interventions to address the identified gaps. The second option is to hire an external consultant (a person or an organisation), who then uses a custom assessment tool and guides the nonprofit based on the results.
The first option demands a significant time commitment and is open to not more than a few hundred nonprofits each year. The second is expensive, and given its high-touch nature, this option too is accessible to only a small number of nonprofits.
For thousands of small to medium-sized nonprofits in India unable to access these options, the current alternatives are limited. The few standalone self-assessments (like the Data Maturity Assessment from Data.org or ID Insight M&E Health Check) are one-offs, each targeting one OD area or a subset thereof, and they do not offer a directed plan for capability improvement.
All this hints at why we at India Partner Network (IPN) developed the recently-launched Assessment feature.
IPN Assessments allow nonprofits to assess their maturity in multiple Organizational Development (OD) areas, and receive tailored recommendations to improve their capacity in each. We’ve started with M&E and Fundraising – more OD areas will follow in the coming months.
An IPN assessment has the following characteristics:
Offered as a micro-diagnostic: Each IPN assessment takes just 10 to 15 minutes to complete. This allows nonprofits to take up assessments in specific areas they wish to target improvements in, instead of taking a full-blown org diagnostic covering all areas (which, given their broad scope, are hard to fit into an annual improvement plan).
Designed as a self-service: Both assessment and the generated recommendations can be consumed independently – nonprofits do not need an external consultant to manage this process. (A recommendation may nudge the nonprofit in the direction of an external intermediary as a follow up step, though.)
Multiple pathways to build capacity: An organisation’s capacity building journey is both highly context dependent and can involve multiple players. To address this, the recommendations generated after an IPN assessment cover (in that OD area):
Actionable knowledge resources mapped to the organisation’s maturity
A list of intermediaries offering capacity building services
A list of courses and programmes available
Connection opportunities with a few experts
Deep platform integration: Unlike a standalone tool, IPN’s assessment capability is integrated with the rest of the IPN platform, from Knowledge Resources to Webinars to the Organisation’s Profile. Users who’ve completed the assessment receive regular nudges to act on their recommendations, and also receive notifications on related capacity building opportunities. For a nonprofit using IPN as a gateway to capacity building, this reinforces the “one-stop-shop” metaphor we’ve often heard from our users.
So far around 60 nonprofits have completed the M&E Assessment that was published in the pilot phase last quarter. Feedback from early users has revealed that (a) the assessment was easy to follow and complete (b) the recommendations shared are comprehensive both in depth and breadth and (c) following these recommendations is not an immediate follow up step: this will require nonprofits to set aside a dedicated amount of time to act on the recommended plan.
We are excited about the potential of IPN Assessments to help nonprofits understand their current maturity levels and structure their capacity building journeys. Even with that first step – of helping nonprofits understand where they stand, creating awareness of their strong and weak areas – we see a lot of value being created.
If you are a nonprofit keen to understand where you stand on M&E or Fundraising readiness, do consider taking an assessment. And let us know how we can improve this important capability.
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