Building GreenHub’s Organizational Muscles

GreenHub staff recently undertook an important step in the development of their new NGO. Over two workshops, staff members completed a Capacity Building Needs Assessment and Action Plan. The main objective of this activity was to help GreenHub to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their organizational capacity and to develop an improvement program to be delivered over the next year.

The first session started with a brainstorming activity to help GreenHub get a broad collective understanding of their skills and knowledge gaps and to identify each staff member’s strengths.

GreenHub team deep in thought, brainstorming their skills and knowledge.

From this, the group then headed into a formal assessment using a capacity building needs assessment matrix that considered six elements of organizational capacity: Mission, Vision and Strategy; Governance and Leadership; Service Delivery and Impact; Resource Development; Strategic Relationships; and Internal Management and Operations. The current organizational capacity level was then ranked for each element and helped to identify the areas where there was a clear need to increase capacity.

A number of opportunities for improvement were identified through this process. The group then prioritized key capacity building focus areas that would have the greatest impact on the organization’s capacity to achieve its mission and developed an action plan to address these areas.

Once the action plan has been implemented, GreenHub will be able to reassess their organizational capacity and see how much they have improved.