Assess your organisational effectiveness 

This new online tool makes available our consulting team’s experience to help you be a more effective organisation.

For nearly a decade, SVA has been using the SVA Fundamentals for Impact framework to help organisations in the social sector assess and increase their effectiveness.  

Today, we’re launching an online tool which gives organisations special access to the top level in our framework. It’s a way for leaders to explore how different aspects of the organisation are performing across 15 characteristics.  

The 15 characteristics cover everything from values to strategy, from ecosystem to end beneficiaries. 

As Anders Uechtritz, Director, Consulting, says: “The tool uses a four-point scoring system for each characteristic to help you self-identify the organisation’s effectiveness. This is based on specific definitions for each level. 

“This provokes you to think harder about particular characteristics and assumptions you might want to test, brainstorm and improve.” 

“In SVA’s work across the sector over the last 20 plus years, we’ve seen that despite best attempts, many funding and social purpose organisations struggle to clearly assess and articulate their effectiveness. This hampers their ability to improve their impact.” 

The Fundamentals for Impact are grounded on the collective experience of many global practitioners and experts, international academic evidence on what effective funders and social purpose organisations look like, and SVA’s own experience. 

The consulting team has used the full framework to think systematically about the areas that make an organisation effective.  

“We’ve used it in the background for numerous projects; when we’re thinking about what good strategy looks like we refer to the Fundamentals. Or what good governance looks like. 

“This tool has been available to download as an Excel file, however it can be overwhelming to figure out how to work your way through 60 questions.” 

Now with the quick online tool, in 10-15 minutes, you can identify which areas you want to explore further. 

“It’s a way we can help organisations improve their overall effectiveness and easily engage with SVA expertise.” 

The online assessment can guide you on its own, or you can use it to make a deeper dive into the full assessment to explore specific characteristics.  

“You might identify that you are only interested in exploring three of the areas further. You can then access the full version to go deeper into how to improve, or you can also talk to SVA about how to move towards more impact in those areas,” says Uechtritz.