Sarah Repucci. 2010. "A User’s Guide to Civil Society Assessments." UNDP.
This guide includes CSO self-assessment tools, as well as reports of assessments that have been done by bilateral, multilaterals, and some INGOs. Assessments have been split into civil society sector assessments, external civil society assessments, and CSO self-assessments. This Guide highlights five dimensions of CSO assessment: capacity, engagement, environment, governance, and impact. There is a useful table that identifies which assessments address these different dimensions in addition to gender and poverty to help organizations in making decisions that could suit their unique needs. The guide also provides a ranking of these tools and assessments with explanations of the materials necessary and the level of documentation provided to implement them ranking on both of these issues from easy to hard.
Overall, there are a few tools that could be directly useful for women’s organizations. The list below identifies tools and resources identified in the guide that some women’s organizations might find useful for assessing different areas of their capacity.
- McKinsey’s ‘Capacity Assessment Grid’
- ‘Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool’ an adaptation of McKinsey’s tool by Marguerite Casey Foundation
- Global Reporting Initiatives’ Tool for NGO Accountability and Sustainability (requires higher level of capacity)
- One World CSO Accountability Checklist (assessing an organization’s accountability to its different stakeholders)
- NGO Management Association Switzerland includes a variety of tools/resources on NGO management
There are also a few examples of bilateral and multilateral organizations’ capacity assessment tools for potential partners that some organizations may find useful.