How have the past two years impacted your organisation?
Forthcoming opportunities to explore how the Effectiveness Toolkit can help your organisation in this changing world.
The past two years, with the increasing urgency of the climate crisis and the broad ranging impacts of the Covid pandemic have caused us all to re-think what we are doing, how we are doing it and how this can be resourced most appropriately. Sustainability of the critical work carried out by Scottish NGOs across the world is more important than ever in a world where the pandemic and the climate crisis continue to impact on the most marginalised.
In continuing commitment to support members strengthen their organisational effectiveness, the Alliance is holding workshops on specific aspects of their work using the newly revised Effectiveness Toolkit.
The Alliance’s Effectiveness Toolkit was revised in 2021. It is a valuable development tool that guides and supports organisations to review their work against a set of international development and organisational good practice principles
The Effectiveness Toolkit guides organisations through a self-assessment process enabling them to review their work against a set of principles of good practice in international development and benchmarks of good operational practice in order to assess priority areas for action and plan for continuous improvement, with useful tips, resources and signposting. The Toolkit focuses on five core areas: Purpose, Governance, Impact, Sustainability and Development .
We will be running online workshops in the coming weeks to look at using the Effectiveness Toolkit in more depth, particularly providing the opportunity to pause and reflect on where we are now and how we want to shape future direction.
Session 1 – Organisational Purpose
Wednesday 9 February at 10 am.
The past months have brought significant changes to the ways that many of us are working and how we operate. Many organisations pivoted rapidly as the pandemic took hold and found quick and creative solutions to the operational, governance and fundraising challenges which arose. Now, two years on, the time is good to reflect on how this has impacted your organisation and what this means for the future. This session will delve into organisation purpose in particular, and is a valuable opportunity to look revisit your overall mission and whether this has shifted. This session will be facilitated by Jen Curran, The Lasting Difference consultancy.
This session will cover:
Introducing the Effectiveness Toolkit
- What it is and what it contains
The Five Effectiveness Capabilities
- Exploring the Five Capabilities
- How to use it: ideas from experience
Using the Effectiveness Toolkit
- Participants to review and complete Mission self-assessment prior to session – discuss their experiences and results with peers in breakout discussion groups.
Session 2 – Financial Sustainability Workshop
Wednesday 1 March at 10 am
The funding landscape has changed enormously over the past months and restrictions have meant that many fundraising modalities have been curtailed or not possible. This session will look to explore financial sustainability and fundraising using the sustainability section of the Effectiveness Toolkit.
This session will cover:
- Using the Sustainability section of the Effectiveness Toolkit in relation to financial sustainability and fundraising.
- Using the toolkit can be used to develop a holistic fundraising strategy that identifies funding from appropriate range of sources (e.g. grants; donations; self-generated funds)
This session will be facilitated by Marie McQuade, consultant and Alliance mentor, who specialises in fundraising and communications with an emphasis on sustainable strategic growth and having the communities we work with at the heart of the charity.