Capacity Building and Assessments
The term “capacity building” gets thrown around quite a lot, but do we really know what it means? The easy definition is time, money, and resources. Capacity building is an investment in sustainability for a business. This can take shape in several ways: construction of a new office, increased budget for marketing, a new program that also brings revenue, or the addition of new employees. The nature of the work changes as client perspectives and market opportunities arise, especially in the pandemic.
Loftis Partners works with organizations on internal capacity. Individual roles and teams shift constantly due to the ever-changing nature of work. New employees join a team and bring new experiences and skills to the group. An employee may deepen their knowledge through training that brings new understanding into their role. Leaders transition and offer new communication practices and work management.
Any of these changes may signal a need for a capacity assessment. A capacity assessment is a process that reviews the expected and unexpected changes in a position. Changes may happen due to a significant event (fellow team member leaving) or over time through smaller transitions. A capacity assessment determines desired capacities and assess existing capabilities, establishes capacity development priorities, and prioritizes capacity development interventions.
A capacity assessment includes a review of current job descriptions, interviews with current employees, and collaborative mapping with the client. Loftis Partners also identifies how roles and team structures align with functional responsibilities (the vertical) and cross-organization collective work (the horizontal). We use our Organization Design Basket model as a support for strategic conversations and recommendation co-creation with the client.
Base pricing (up to 20 employees, 2-3 teams), $3500
$250 per additional employee over 15 employees
The time required for a capacity assessment varies based on the size of the organization and availability of the employees and client contact. Typically, these take 3-6 months.
Need more information? Read our blog post What Exactly is Capacity Building? And Do We Need it?
“Sally was a joy to work with and brings a broad base of non profit experience to her consultancy. She’s a quick study, full of ideas and gets right to the heart of the matter. In addition to solid advice and some new ideas she completely blew my mind with an important new factor for success to focus on, not just for this project, but for our nonprofit in general!”