Most organisational capacity assessments arrive as a consultant’s spreadsheet, get filled in once for a funder, and are never opened again. This one is built to be used by the organisation itself, and used more than once.
It covers twenty-seven capacity areas across three domains — how you are governed, led, staffed and funded; how work is designed, delivered and measured; and how you reach the world outside. Each area is scored against a five-level rubric, from embryonic to exemplary, with the level descriptions written plainly enough that a board member and a programme officer will read them the same way.
What you get back is not a score. It is an executive summary naming your organisation, a list of what needs urgent attention, a plan sequenced by dependency rather than by score, and for each gap a specific recommendation — whether it needs training the people you have, a new hire, an outside consultant, a system, or a decision only your board can make. Those are different decisions with different budgets, and most improvement plans blur them.
It is free and there is no sign-up. Your answers stay in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to send it. Save the file when you finish — loading it back next year turns a snapshot into a direction of travel, which is what funders actually read.
Before you start
Score what you can evidence, not what you intend. Where two levels both seem to fit, take the lower one — a capacity assessment is only useful when it is honest, and the temptation to score the organisation you are becoming rather than the one you are is the single most common way these exercises waste everyone’s time.
Score it with a mixed group if you can: a board member, the director, and someone who delivers the work. Disagreement about a score is where the useful conversation lives. Allow thirty to forty-five minutes.
After the assessment
If you would like a reminder to run this again in six months, or the improvement-plan template that goes with it, leave your details below.