Strengthening Capacity in Policy, Advocacy, Governance, and Finance: A Facilitator Guide for Organizational Capacity Assessments

The primary function of an OCA is to support a process of internal learning, dialogue, and goal setting around capacity-strengthening priorities within a partner organization. This process enables organizations to direct their own development and track their current capacity against what is needed to achieve their goals. The OCA process is highly participatory, designed to strengthen a partner organization's ownership of the process and its Capacity-Strengthening Plan, while fostering a trusting and collaborative relationship with the international partner to collaboratively define the scope of a capacity development effort. The process is not generic; rather it focuses on how to assess and strengthen capacity to carry out policy, governance, advocacy, and finance activities. Capacity assessments can take many forms, depending on their purpose. Two common variables are who conducts the assessment and how the tool is developed. Generally, capacity assessments exist on a continuum from an external, diagnostic assessment conducted by someone outside of the organization to a participatory self-assessment in which people within the organization reflect on and rate its capacity in a particular area or set of competencies. The Health Policy Project's (HPP) capacity development team developed a facilitator's guide for organizational capacity assessments, drawing on the past experience of the team in designing and facilitating capacity assessments with organizations. The guide is accompanied by a series of capacity development resources guides, prepared by staff from various organizations, including Futures Group, Futures Institute, Plan International USA, Population Reference Bureau, and RTI International. The facilitator's guide is part of an Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) suite of tools, which includes a series of capacity development resources guides. The guide is designed to support a process of internal learning, dialogue, and goal setting around capacity-strengthening priorities within a partner organization. The OCA process is highly participatory, designed to strengthen a partner organization's ownership of the process and its Capacity-Strengthening Plan. The guide outlines the steps involved in conducting an OCA, including preparation, self-assessment, results debrief and analysis, priority setting and action planning, and documentation of the process, results, plan, and next steps. The guide also includes annexes with additional resources, such as an overview of the HPP Organizational Capacity Assessment, how to customize an OCA tool, and a capacity-strengthening plan template. The OCA process is designed to facilitate the assessment of an organization's systems, processes, and procedures; the resources it has available; and the competencies it requires to carry out policy-related work. The process is not generic; rather it focuses on how to assess and strengthen capacity to carry out policy, governance, advocacy, and finance activities.