Organizational Assessments are focused, collaborative explorations of an organization’s current strengths, weaknesses, goals, culture, and relationships. Through an assessment, Strategies for Change and the client work together to build greater clarity about ‘what is’ and what is needed. Assessments help provide focus for capacity-building and organization development initiatives, such as strategic or programmatic planning, board development, and consultations with work groups and teams.

An assessment typically begins with a series of conversations aimed at clarifying the goals for the assessment and framing key questions to be addressed. The consultant may take the lead in gathering information through interviews, focus groups and surveys, and in analyzing and interpreting the results, or may provide coaching and support to members of the Board and staff in data collection and analysis, or these tasks may be shared. In any case, subsequent presentations and facilitated discussions are designed to help the group as a whole make sense of the results and build agreements for follow-up.

Read about how one organization used an assessment to build agreements about priorities and align key stakeholders.