The Guides

Introduction to the guides

The toolkit is built around eight areas of organisational capacity crucial to long-term sustainability. They are:

Compliance: Are we legal?
Governance: Can we demonstrate accountability?
Direction: Do we know where we are going?
Finance: Have we got the financial resources to meet our obligations?
People: Have we got the right people and skills?
Operations: Are we efficient and effective at meeting our objectives?
Networks: Do we work well with others?
Revitalise: Explore diverse opportunities and challenges for sustained development.

Each area of organisational capacity has its own guide complete with tips, tools and templates to help develop capacity, along with signposts to other resources. We have only included the basics in the guides - the minimum you need to ensure sustained effectiveness.
Author: Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness: Fiona Ash, Caroline Copeman, Julia Lever, Nick McAllister, Ernie Messer, Atul Patel, Stella Smith
Published: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-95606543-0-2
Price £30.00

Self-Assessment

To encourage you to make best use of your time, we have provided a self-assessment tool. By following the questions, we will take you through the crucial areas of organisational capacity.

In this way you can then identify those areas where you already meet the basics, and those where you need to do more work.
What happens next will be up to you and could include celebrating your achievements; making a priority list and plan what to tackle next; deciding to really go for it and follow up our pointers for the next stage: implementing a set of quality standards.

Download the Self-Assessment Tool

Take the Self-Assessment online