Insights

Organizational assessments are an essential part of NPI EXPAND’s capacity development approach. NPI EXPAND has designed and adapted different organizational assessment tools, including the organizational capacity assessment (OCA), technical capacity assessment (TCA) in family planning, education, social marketing, social accountability, and the organizational performance Index (OPI). The outcome of these assessments enables us to design various activities to support NUPs to address their priority capacity needs. The OCA involves a facilitated self-assessment, which gives representatives of an organization an opportunity to discuss its capacities, systems, and performance to identify and prioritize capacity strengthening needs. NPI EXPAND draws on the support of local consultants to implement some of the assessments as well as capacity strengthening activities. We train the consultants to ensure they understand applying the capacity assessment tools through a facilitated self-assessment approach that many of the consultants have not used before.

In May 2022, the Capacity Development Director traveled to Pakistan to train Rivets Consulting Inc., a local firm that NPI EXPAND contracted to implement assessments for the Human Development Activity (HDA) partners. The training took about 4 hours, followed by an actual assessment of one of the partners to ground the learning. NPI EXPAND staff collaborated with Rivets to facilitate an assessment of the Institute of Rural Management (IRM). IRM is one of the initial NPI EXPAND/HDA  implementing partners in Pakistan. IRM is a non-profit organization focusing on capacity development and learning as means of employment, poverty alleviation, and better health outcomes in Pakistan and other countries in the Asia region.

The assessment enabled IRM management and staff to reflect on their capacities, systems, and structuresto identify areas to strengthen so that the organization is more effective in achieving its mission. Based on recommendations from this assessment, NPI EXPAND will support IRM in implementing various capacity strengthening activities. We will use a combination of direct technical assistance by NPI EXPAND staff and also give IRM an opportunity to directly contract with local consultants for specific capacity strengthening services. On the other hand, Rivets will continue to facilitate similar assessments for the other HDA implementing partners.