Organizational assessment tool for social movements
21 May 2012
My Healthy Organization (MHO) Social Service Assessment Tool was developed by RoadMap, a
US-based consultancy network that provides capacity-building support to social justice
organizations and movements. The tool is designed to integrate social justice and movement-building
values into organizational effectiveness benchmarks. It also aims to promote learning opportunities
for the organizations (and thus increase organizational development capacity "on the ground")
through providing detailed process and next-steps guidelines.
The assessement tool is specifically designed for organizations that
are:
- kicking off strategic planning and want to begin with a snapshot of their strengths and challenges;
- having a leadership transition or experiencing a funding loss or gain and needing to figure out what to keep, build on or change;
- seeing a changed political landscape within their community, but haven't figured out what to do
with this new reality.
According to the designers, MHO differs from conventional organizational assessment tools in three ways:
1. it is designed for non-profit organizations that represent a hybrid of social services and social change strategies. Many other assessments are designed with service-oriented organizations in mind, but there are an increasingly large number of organizations that combine social services with social change activities. More “mainstream” assessment tools do not adequately represent these diverse activities, strategies and cultures.
2. it is specifically tailored for “movement-building” organizations. For organizations primarily engaged in community organizing, base building, leadership development and advocacy, the content and terminology of many existing assessment tools are usually unable to capture the more qualitative elements of constituent leadership development and community accountability, and the context of race, power, class, generation, language, gender and sexual orientation. At its worst, using mainstream tools can be a jarring and disorienting experience. The authors of the MHO Social Change Assessment Tool hope this tool more accurately speaks the language and captures the work common to these groups.
3. it aims to help strengthen organizations through a thoughtful process. Assessment tools are often used in a vacuum, with little attention paid to process. They can raise the expectation of a “quick fix,” or worse, result in unintended consequences or situations that the organization is unprepared to handle. The MHO process helps organizations to think through a number of questions before carrying out the assessement, including: how it is interpreted, why you are doing it, who participates, and how it is connected to other organizational processes. These tools and guide are designed to spur ongoing, dynamic organizational learning as much as produce a formal assessment of the organization at a certain point in time.
Additional support is provided through a web platform that allows participating organizations to receive an analysis, based on a compilation of all results, that explains your organization level of development in various areas or organizational life, areas of strength and weakness, and other helpful guidance.
For more information as well as a link to the MHO Social Assessment Tool, please follow the link below.
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