Library

From the Roots Up: Strengthening Organizational Capacity through Guided Self-Assessment

Capacity building can be understood as an explicit effort to improve an organization’s performance in relation to its purpose, context, resources and sustainability. The self-assessment process presented in this field guide is designed to help organizations recognize their own potential and decide for themselves how to best address the challenges they face. This guide has been written specifically for local intermediary organizations working with community-based partners. Throughout the guide there are tips on how to adapt and create exercises and methods to fit the specific needs of the organization with which you are working and the local context. The margins are used to summarize the main points and the text is broken up by useful graphs, charts and graphics that assist in the explanation of the main concepts.

The guide contains nine chapters, appendices, a glossary of key concepts and a list of recommended resources. The chapters are as follows:

1. The big picture of development
2. How to use the guide
3. The main concepts of organizational self-assessment
4. Ideas for preparing exercises
5. Overview of planning a guided self-assessment workshop
6. Conducting fieldwork
7. How to work with facilitators
8. Analysis and documentation
9. A reference list of exercises used in the guide

• Resource type Toolkit
• Author Gubbels, P.; Koss, C.
• OrganisationWorld Neighbors
• Year of Publication2000
• RegionGlobal
• LanguageEnglish
• Number of pages194 pp.
• EditionWorld Neighbors Field Guide: Capacity Building
• Keywords Capacity Building, Self-Assessment, Staff Training, Assessment Tools