June 29, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
A Funder’s Guide to Organizational Assessment: Tools, Processes, and Their Use in Building Capacity
edited by Lori Bartczak
This book helps foundations evaluate their programs and management operations as they plan to expand their grant making and help nonprofit recipients improve their efficiency.
Edited by Lori Bartczak, manager of special projects at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the book offers advice on how to measure effectiveness and what it means to help nonprofit groups strengthen their fund raising, leadership, mission, and programs.
The introduction, written by Carol Lukas and Sandra Jacobsen, respectively president of the Fieldstone Alliance and a managing consultant at the group, emphasizes that nonprofit groups should be assured that candid responses to the foundation’s inquiries will not cost them the grant maker’s support.
“For the assessment to have the greatest impact, it is critical that the process be designed as a journey of learning and discovery rather than as a test or judgment,” they write.
The authors show grant makers how to examine grantee performance and identify areas where grant recipients need additional support and guidance. The second half of the book applies those same assessment standards to the foundations’ internal operations.
Publisher: Fieldstone Alliance, 60 Plato Boulevard East, Suite 150, St. Paul, Minn. 55107; (800) 274-6024; http://www.fieldstonealliance.org; 197 pages; $48.95; ISBN 0-940069-53-9.
