We believe that an organziation is more likely to accomplish its goals when it’s willing to take a hard look at its operations and services, decide what’s not working, and take steps to fix it.
Our Organizational Assessment projects are formal efforts that look at your mission, vision, and operations, and seek to provide you with a workable plan that will lead to forward progress in accomplishing your goals.
An assessment begins with an analysis of written documents related to your organization’s operations. This includes public documents and materials such as adverstisements, your website, brochures, and videos. It also includes internal documents you provide that give us a clear glimpse of your planning process–whether it’s simple or sophisticated.
Next, you identify the appropriate stakeholders (board, administration, constituents, program staff) that you believe could make valuable contributions to the process of examining the work of your organization. That working group then gathers in one place for an extended time to work through a series of exercises designed to surface the good, the bad, and the ugly about who you are and what you do. Note: More complex organizations will require a more extended session, or more than one session must be held.
We’ll take the results of our assessment meeting and summarize them for all to review. Then, based on what we’ve learned, we’ll provide you with an array of action steps designed to move your organization forward. We’ll prioritize these implementation steps, encouraging you to work on those which are the simplest on the one hand, but have the greatest potential for immediate gain.
After a designated time, we’ll gather some or all of the working group of stakeholders for an evaluation progress meeting. We’ll take a hard look at what we’ve tried to do in working toward change, and assess where you are, and where you are not, making progress. Course corrections flow out of this meeting.
As necessary, additional meetings may be held, but usually an organization not only lays out a more effective plan through the Organizational Assessment process, but also learns how to run, implement, and monitor the ongoing planning/change process without outside help.
The goal is to provide maximum value and insight for a reasonable time and money investment. Most organizations benefit from sessions that require approximately a total of one or two full days (over a one month period) on the part of the stakeholders, and approximately five or six days of NLI staff time. Such assessments cost approximately $3000.